


High Tide

by vooodooochild



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Zuko, Basically a sun soaked California AU, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Honestly just a Lords of Dogtown AU, M/M, Music is basically used as a cure all, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Past Abuse, Skater Zuko, Slow Burn, Surfer Sokka, kind of?, the slowest of slow burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 90,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25396165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vooodooochild/pseuds/vooodooochild
Summary: "I'm Zuko. I provide Aang with his monstrosity of a drink every morning and give him shit for it in return.""Sokka," he introduces with a grin and slight wave, and Zuko nods, still smiling slightly before it slips off his face. Sokka distantly wishes that he could keep it there. "Think you can hook me up with one of those monstrosities?"Respectively, Sokka and Zuko both feel like they’ve got their last summer before adulthood relatively scoped out. Spoiler Alert: they don’t.
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Suki/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 420
Kudos: 595





	1. Chapter 1

The sun hasn't even started creeping over the horizon yet, and Sokka's already out of bed, stumbling across his room and rustling his stiff blinds to try and catch a glimpse at the beach. He half pulls on his wetsuit and slips into flip flops, grabbing his board from where it's leaning by his door and bracing himself for the hard part. 

He could risk traipsing through the house past both Katara and Gran Gran's room, down the creaky old steps and through the lower level with 7 feet of board at his side, or he could risk the second story drop down to the side yard. He glances between his door and window, before heading back towards where the breeze is gently blowing his curtains back and jimmies it open as quiet as he can, which is admittedly not very. 

He pops the screen out of the window and sets it against his wall, before pushing his board down and out so that it leans against the side of the house. He pulls himself up onto the ledge, feels his heart race as he prepares to make the leap to the rope he's got looped around his escape tree, and goes for it. 

Between Aang trying to do acrobatics off of it nearly every night and Sokka sneaking out an absurd amount lately, it promptly snaps upon contact and slams him flat on his back. 

He bites back a yelp, settling for a low groan and rocking on the well trodden path around the side of the house before he even tries to get up. It's not a good sign that he's already somewhat sore, both from Suki convincing him to try out street skating again yesterday and just general soreness from his day to day, but like hell is he going to miss first break. 

He straightens himself, twists his abdomen so that his spine lets out a satisfying 'pop', before tucking his board back under his arm and ducking along the side of the house. It can't be but 5:30, but he still doesn't want to deal with backlash for sneaking out. He's not out doing drugs or anything, and surfing is considerably less nefarious than literally anything any one of his peers does on a day to day, but still. Disappointing Gran-Gran would sting almost as much as losing the first waves of the day to hoggy Vals before they start charging tourists for 'lessons.'

He feels his phone buzz and has no doubt that it's Suki or Aang, berating him for being late. He always is, even if 5:30 is stupidly early for summer, regardless of what awaits. He'll be snuck back into bed by 8 and sleep it off until noon, then emerge without suspicion and continue on. 

He jogs his way down to the shore, the mere five minute walk split by his short cut through a particular condominiums pool area that leads down to the pier. It’s only a bit of a walk down the shore from there to their designated spot. 

"Took you long enough," Suki says as a greeting when he ducks between beams to meet them. Aang is bouncing as he glances out at the water, no doubt either having passed out at 10 pm like a reasonable and well balanced teenager or not slept at all and chugged his 'Go-Go Juice' (16 oz Red Bull mixed with a large double shot espresso from his favorite coffee shop in town) in an attempt to stay upright. Aang functions about the same way regardless of the truth, so it's hard to tell. 

"Fuck off," he says easily, and looks over his shoulder at the sparkling water picking up the pinks and oranges of the rising sun. It's absolutely blinding. Sokka feels alive. He grins. "I'm just in time." 

~

The only time Zuko ever harbors any distaste for his Uncle and his antics is when he has morning shift at 5 fucking am, and it's not ever a feeling he's negotiable on. Why does a tea shop open at 5 am? They have, like, 5 caffeine/coffee related items, and while yes, Zuko will admit that they get a surprising amount of business during first shift, the Jasmine Dragon is well enough off that they could be open from 1 to 5 and net enough to sustain. But no. Iroh is a man of the people, and Zuko suffers because of it. 

"Sifu Hotman!" A certain and familiar bald kid slurs at him 15 minutes into his shift, and Zuko huffs a laugh, but hopes it sounds more annoyed than he actually is. Aang's a trip, stumbling into the shop about every other day with some exploit about why he was up the entire night before without offering any explanation as to why he's up so early anyways. Zuko, the perceptive genius he is, draws his conclusion from the huge ass surfboard he sometimes has tucked under his arm when he fumbles his way in. "You know the one."

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir. If I could pique your interest, we have a really calming Lavender as our special today, mixed with Chamomile that'll put you right to sleep—"

"Don't say that word!" Aang interrupts, and Zuko keeps his customer service smile plastered on his face just to irk him. Customer service mode is the only thing besides when Zuko insists he doesn't know his name that grants Zuko the little success he's had in pulling any bit of frustration out of the kid. From Zuko's side of things it's purely good natured and merely for entertainments sake, and weeks of this little game since Aang's started coming in have suggested the same from him. 

They're not friends, exactly, but Aang seems to want them to be. Zuko's too much of an asshole to admit that it's not the most abjectly awful thing to think about (he wants to so badly see what happens if they interacted outside of this setting but it's so scary and there's no way that he is ever going to genuinely entertain the idea—). 

"Double or single shot?" Zuko asks instead of pushing further, and Aang looks slightly disappointed but bounces back pretty fast considering how sleep deprived he is. 

"Double. For sure. Is there anything else you can slip in there?"

"Well," Zuko leans forward conspiratorially just as Uncle comes from the back to set up the display case up front, and whispers to Aang, who's leaned forward as well, "we actually just started running a drug ring from the back. A little speed will cost you, but—"

Uncle gasps dramatically from where he's stocking the pastries that Zuko stress baked into the wee hours of the morning last night. They look like shit, but he's particularly proud of those orange zest scones. They taste excellent. Uncle smacks him on the hip with a rag. 

"That's supposed to be kept quiet, nephew," he says, looking over at Aang and shooting a wink his way. Aang beams, and as Uncle heads back towards the kitchen, he says: "I love your uncle. Can you guys please adopt me?"

"I'll ask him about it. For now, the best we can do is your off menu atrocity. Can I get a name for the order?"

"Zuko, come on!"

Per Uncles insistence, Zuko never charges Aang for the toxic waste he tries to pass off as actually edible. 

~

"What time are we having your next skating lesson, Sok?" 

Sokka's thrown himself back into the sand, warming below him as the sun fully crests over the horizon. He needs to head home soon, but for now the morning is calm and beautiful, and he wants to hold onto it for just a few more minutes. 

"We're not," he answers Suki, who's a few feet away waxing her board. Aang's to his left, nursing a sand burn on his ankle he'd caught trying to carve way out of their league. "Board's too small, man. My center of balance is all off." He gestures with his hands, and Suki rolls her eyes at him. Sokka grabs his shirt from where he'd tossed it in the sand before he hit the surf and tugs it over his head. The sand pocketed in it trickles down his back and front and makes him shiver. 

"C'mon," she drawls, giving him a serious set of puppy dog eyes. "We can all street skate in the afternoons when the Vals all invade here and come full circle. If you could get Katara in, we'd have the whole crew and—"

"I'll stick to the water, thanks," Sokka interrupts, but he's knows he'll get suckered into skating again far sooner than he's comfortable with. "I've gotta bounce. Meeting at mine tonight?" Sokka shoots at Aang, who gives him a thumbs up and continues to suck down the melted bits of his caffeine concoction happily. He flashes the both of them a shaka and gets one in return before hauling his board up under him and jogging back towards the main drag. 

He ducks in and out of alleys towards the outskirts of the tourist traps, but regardless of this by the time he makes it back to their neighborhood, Gran-Gran is standing on the front porch, leaning against the railing with a steaming cup of coffee in her hands. Sokka smiles sheepishly and rubs the back of neck, digging the end of his board into the choppy sand-dirt of their front yard and leaning against it. 

"Morning, Gran!" He says cheerily, despite the exhaustion creeping in behind his eyes now that the adrenaline has worn off. "I was just—"

"On dawn patrol?" She says knowingly, and Sokka can't argue, so he admits defeat and just yawns. "Come on," she says after a beat, gesturing towards the house as she turns that way and heads in. Sokka tosses his board onto the porch and follows after her, wincing as the creaky screen door screams behind him. 

"I'm sorry," Sokka says on instinct, even though she doesn't actually seem mad. She shoots him an unimpressed look, and Sokka tries for another smile. "At least I'm not partying?" Right now, he thinks, but doesn't say. 

"No, but still being reckless," she sighs and sits at the dining room table. Sokka pulls himself up onto the kitchen island and swings his feet. "Going out there alone is dangerous, Sokka—"

"I wasn't alone! I promise," he interjects swiftly, and some of the tension in Gran-Gran's shoulders dissipates. He doesn't want her to worry, really. Doesn't want to be yet another cause of stress in their lives. "I was with Suki and Aang. And I really am sorry for making you worry. I won't do it again," he says, even though he'll be up at the ass crack of dawn again the next morning to peel the first cracks of the day. He'll just be quieter and quicker. 

"Yes, you will," she says tiredly, though a fond smile graces her lips and Sokka feels a strike of relief break through his chest. "Just be safe. And maybe a bit more quiet on your way out. Not all of us feel like waking up at 5 am, you know."

Sokka laughs a bit, and as Gran Gran heads off to get ready for the day and open the shop, he glances at the old clock above the archway and reads the time. 7:54. 

He rubs at his tired eyes, feels that distantly sore throat feeling he always gets when he acknowledges how sleepy he is, but also doesn't feel like conking out yet. With Suki inviting them all over tonight, there's no telling whether it's a small kick back with all of their friends or a full blown party. Depends on her parents, Sokka supposes. He kinda hopes for the former, but his reputation necessitates that he hopes for the latter. 

boomerAang chat (7:55 am)

Sokka: aang :)) what's the coffee place w the good kush called

Aang: the jasmine dragon!! it's down by that funky guru store on 4th

Aang: if u go n the cranky guy w dark hair is there you gotta pester him for me, he's an ass and deserves it

Sokka: thank u, ur my savior <333 pestering is my specialty don't sweat it

Sokka hops off of the counter and heads back up towards his room, taking note of the light peeking out from under Katara's door. He shoots her a text asking if she wants anything before slipping into his bedroom and pushing the door closed behind him. It still sticks in it's frame and the lock never got fixed from when he threw himself against it when Katara and Jet locked themselves in there last summer, so he props his desk chair up under it. 

He grabs the Alva shirt slung over said chair—one he's pretty sure belongs to Aang, actually—and yanks it over his head. He ditches his sandy board shorts and drapes them over the windowsill so they air out and slips on a different and startlingly teal pair. He shoves his wallet deep into the pocket with his phone and slips on his Birks before heading back down. 

By the time he finally find his way to the Jasmine Dragon, the place is clearly experiencing some of morning rush, and Sokka is just not having that line, but he heads in anyways. The building itself is unassuming enough, a typical boutique style shop with a two story bay window to the left, but the rounded twin doors of the entrance have matching sun's painted on them, one grinning and one crying like that theater thing Sokka knows absolutely nothing about. They look hand painted though, fresh and stark against the worn purple door. 

It's relatively large for a mom-and-pop tea shop, though it seems all these customers are here for to-go orders, because the plush orange booths lining either side and the floating cafe tables are mostly vacant. Still, it's clearly doing well and is positively bumping. Sokka needs his caffeine, and he's set on getting it, but he gets caught up in the weird art hung all around. 

The wall is covered in decor, be it framed photos, clipped news articles, abstract art, pictures of musicians, old metal signs from previous establishments—it's decked. Everything seems to have a place, though, neat and hung in a swing of chaos that indescribably makes sense. It kind of reminds him of the Rainbow Bar. He loves it immediately. 

He leans in to peer at one of the framed photos, sees an older man with a jovial smile on his face, a Santa hat on his head despite the tacky orange swim trunks he's got on. There's a bell in his hand, and he looks like one of those Salvation Army workers outside of Walmart around the holidays, but the picture was clearly taken in front of the restaurant. The picture's slightly fuzzy, and Sokka would gander it's likely due to whoever having taken it laughing too hard to maintain, as Sokka is sure he would be in their position. 

He turns to head into line, but gets distracted by the large mural on the opposite wall. Two large dragons, one red and one blue, twist around each other in the foreground of a winding ball of multicolored fire. Sokka's not really an art guy, but from explicitly not being one, he can appreciate a damn good artist. To the side of the centerpiece are various flowers and plants and-oh, little labels next to the ones closest to the counter indicate representations of the different types of tea. Creative. 

Closer to the door, a large and somewhat twisted face takes the forefront, blue and highlighted with white, almost sneering—

"Hey, Mister!"

Sokka's snapped out of his viewing at the loud voice calling at him from the counter, and he finds himself in a lull around him. Most everyone's been served—damn, that was fast—and have either left or taken residence in the seats. The one addressing him behind the counter turns out to be a short girl, inky black bangs down to her eyebrows and the rest of her hair piled at the top of her head in a messy bun, popping bubblegum and adorning a sick pair of big green sunglasses. Not Aang's friend, then. 

"This isn't an art gallery," she says, grinning in a way that's not quite malicious but definitely doesn't instill much confidence in Sokka. He heads up towards the counter anyways. 

"Might as well be. You could probably turn a profit charging admission," he says, trying to break through the clipped tone and lighten her up a bit. It doesn't take much, because she surprisingly tips her head back and laughs, though the sound is brash and bold too, and maybe that's just her style. The name tag pinned on her chest reads 'Toph'. 

"I'll pass that along to the boss man. I'm sure he'd get a kick out of it," she says, leaning forward on her elbows. When Sokka looks down, her black shirt has little white dots across the front and—oh, is that-? "See something you like?"

"No, I just—“ Sokka doesn't say 'oh, you're blind?' like a dumb fuck, instead he asks, "How'd you know I was looking at the art?" The girl—Toph—isn't phased by his question. 

"I keep track of the number of times the bell rings," she sticks a finger toward the little bell tacked up above the door. "I'd counted through how many people had come up and subtracted the amount of groups of people, leaving you. From that, I was able to pick up on where you're energy was, which was of course by the mural."

"..Seriously?"

"No, dumbass. My boss told me." 

As if on cue, a figure bursts out from the large swinging door behind the counter, three large Tupperware boxes stacked on top of each other with varying pastries filling each one. The person stumbles, regains their footing, stumbles once more, before succumbing and setting the boxes down on the counter next to Toph. He pushes them towards the display case and huffs, crouching down to his knees and resting his forehead against the edge of the counter. 

"Why did you let me make those? Why didn't you tell me to just go the fuck to bed—"

"Don't swear in front of customers," she says, and Sokka gathers that this isn't the boss in question the moment a teen peeks up and falters at his presence. 

"Shit," he breathes, before reddening and rubbing his hands over his face. "I meant shoot...Sorry?"

He's pretty. 

Sokka's never seen him before, not at school nor around during these first couple weeks of break, because he's sure he'd remember if he had. He looks frazzled, and just about as sleep deprived as Sokka feels judging by his sunken eyes, but it works. From the moment Sokka catches sight of him, his hair pulled back and fanning down across his aristocratic features messily, he hopes desperately this is Aang's friend. He's still a bit red, but he's seemed to come back to himself a bit, straightening from his position and looking at Sokka with these sharp golden eyes—okay, that's unnatural. 

As is the giant mottled scar across the left side of his face. 

"I like your shirt," Sokka blurts, for lack of anything better to say, and the boy's brow furrows before he looks down at himself. Zack De La Rocha's face stares back up at him. 

"Oh. Thanks, man," he says, a bit halted and clipped, but not really mean, more like the words and the casualty with which he wishes to convey them in are unfamiliar. 

"Yeah, for sure. Hey, are you Aang's friend?" He asks as Toph laughs to herself and heads out into the main dining area to wipe tables. Sokka leans forward on the counter and the guy flinches near imperceptibly, and almost instinctually leans away from him. Sokka frowns, but recovers his relaxed slump when he looks back up from where he'd looked down at his feet. 

"Friend is..a generous way of putting it," he says, and a small smile graces his lips as he says it. "I'm Zuko. I provide Aang with his monstrosity of a drink every morning and give him shit for it in return."

"Sokka," he introduces with a grin and slight wave, and Zuko nods, still smiling slightly before it slips off his face. Sokka distantly wishes that he could keep it there. "Think you can hook me up with one of those monstrosity's?" 

Zuko makes a face, features drawing together and nose crinkling, and Sokka can't help but laugh at the dramatics. 

"I mean, if you're sure," he says, shaking his head slightly. 

"Aang's always bouncing off the walls at dawn patrol, but I know the fucker's up all night playing Minecraft with my sister. I need some of that energy right about now," Sokka explains, and Zuko tilts his head to the side, eyes narrowing. 

"Dawn patrol?"

"Yeah!" Sokka says enthusiastically, but Zuko doesn't perk up and-oh. He's not a surfer, then. "Me and a few friends hit the waves every morning before it gets super crowded. That's just what everyone calls it, I don't really know why. 

"I knew he was surfing," Zuko mutters more to himself than Sokka, and Sokka feels something uncurl in his chest when Zuko tugs his hair out of its bun. Toph comes back from where she'd been wiping tables and Zuko excuses himself to go make the drink. 

Sokka finds himself looking back over at the painted plants beside them, and frowns. 

"Hey, who painted it?" He asks Toph, who he sees out of the corner of his eye lean herself against the counter behind him. 

"Some asshole," she answers simply, shrugging and turning away from him to deal with the group of women that had found their way into the shop. At the same time, Zuko emerges from the back, holding the coffee cup a considerable distance away from himself. Sokka turns back to face him, grinning at Zuko's antics (or is he genuinely just that repulsed?) as Zuko conjures two Red Bull's from somewhere beneath the counter. 

He pops and dumps them both in unceremoniously, before stirring it with a grimace and popping a lid over the top of it. He sticks a straw atop it and slides it Sokka's way. 

"Good freaking luck," he says, but he's doing that little half smile thing again, so Sokka doesn’t take him too seriously. 

"How much do I owe you?" Sokka asks, moving to get out his wallet as he simultaneously sticks his straw through the lid. Zuko frowns and shakes his head. 

"Yeah, no. I'm not charging you for that. Aang has never once paid for his coffee here, and I'm pretty sure my uncle would skin me alive if I did, so. Yeah."

Zuko's kinda awkward, Sokka thinks blearily. He's somewhere in between not saying enough and rambling, and it seems like he's simultaneously trying to make up for both. 

"Friends and family discount?" Sokka jests lightly, because he's definitely not gonna argue with free coffee from a cute boy, but Zuko blanches ever so slightly, and Sokka wonders if he's somehow overstepped or something. 

"Sure, lets go with that," he says, and Sokka grins once more, before bidding both him and Toph farewell and heading back out into a day that's just beginning to swelter. 

The drink is disgusting, but Sokka can't stop smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know oh so very little about surf culture, please have mercy on me 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suki throws a party. Aang decides that Zuko and him are friends, which of course throws him for a loop.
> 
> ‘Hot ponytail guy’ makes a return to Zuko’s life.

"I want another tattoo," Zuko says, curving his sharpie around the shape of a flame right above the tear in his jeans above his knee. It fits well against the other flames encircling the outline of the Japanese Lily he's sketched. He's not quite satisfied, but he sets the marker down momentarily and tugs up the sleeve of his hoodie to take a look at the characters inked into his forearm, as much a part of his identity as the mark across his face. "Music related, maybe," he continues, speaking in a way he knows his therapist would say is mumbling, but because it's Toph and her hearing is particularly sharp he doesn't care for now. 

Perched up on the roof of the Jasmine Dragon, there's no customers or image to uphold, so it doesn't matter. 

"Considering it's you, that doesn't really narrow it down too much," she calls back to him from where she's balancing on the slight overhang at the edge of the roof. When they first started hanging out, it scared him shitless. Anybody else and it still would, but Toph's as sure footed as they come. Has to be, he supposes. 

"Fair point. I think I only got the first few past Uncle because I was in the middle of some kind of mental breakdown, anyways," he huffs, and Toph laughs softly, shaking her head. She plops down and dangles her legs next to him. 

"Probably, but I don't think he's capable of saying no to you. Hey, you wanna go to a party tonight?" She asks out of nowhere, and Zuko scoffs, lying backwards onto the concrete. The last party Toph managed to get him to go to at the beginning of the summer left Zuko very drunk and very sad, stumbling up the fire escape as the sun was rising over the edge of the ocean. Zuko knew no one, it wasn't pleasant and he'd rather not repeat the experience. More importantly, he'd also rather not piss of one of his only friends, so there's that. 

"Why?" He asks, even though he already knows what his answer is, that he'll get swindled into going regardless of whatever fight he puts up. Toph shrugs. 

"It's been a minute. Aang's friend Suki invited us."

"Us?" 

"Us."

His first problem lies in that Toph has the receipts. She pulls out her phone and shoves it against Zuko's chest, and there glaring back at him is proof of his invite. 

His second problem is that he knows Suki. Likes Suki. She's come into the shop once or twice, but moreover they've met up at the park a bunch of times after hours since Zuko and his Uncle had relocated here, and they get along really well. She's a killer skater and a good chat, and they've got this unspoken solidarity thing that really seals the deal. 

Plus, she's on the local underground roller derby team, which is so cool. And it's not complicated between them, because Zuko's not really private about being out of the closet anymore, and Suki's properly crushed out on Ty Lee, whom she'd met through Zuko himself. There's no drama. Instead, Zuko has a kick ass friend, who skates with him and shares weed, and, as of today, invites him and his other best friend to parties. 

"I don't think it's supposed to be some huge thing, but, y'know. Sizeable," Toph continues on, and Zuko feels his life force dripping away at the thought of going to a party, regardless of the company he'd be around. He stops, tries to 'think postively', and actually considers it. 

What else is he going to do with his Friday night, anyways? Distract himself with meaningless activity until exhaustion creeps in so cold and deep he can't avoid sleep? At least going to a party will provide some sense of distraction. Plus, it'll fulfill his social requirement for a bit, and make his uncle happy. 

"Okay," Zuko finally says, and Toph's head snaps in his direction. 

"It's that easy?"

"Yep." Zuko heaves a heavy sigh and lifts himself from his spot, kicking at a few loose stones against the ledge of the roof. Toph stares after him for a minute, before huffing a laugh and grinning. And that's that. It's that easy. 

~

Zuko's a sucker, and should learn to not be persuaded under the premise of good company and free booze. 

He's never been to Suki's house, but when him and Toph make their way over to the address they're, it's huge. Huge and filled to the brim with people, and the Drake bleeding from every room is the sole cause of the venomous headache that's pulsating at his temples now. 

He's long since lost Toph and Suki to the crowd, and separated himself from it the second he realized his friends had dipped. Which is how he finds himself, once again, on the roof, where all his bad luck regarding tonight started. Historically, bad decisions happen on rooftops, he thinks blearily. 

There's a small overhang outside the window of the upstairs landing that overlooks the pool, and Zuko's not people watching, per se, but it's a lot easier to breathe up here than it is pushing through throngs of people in the house below. He's gonna slip away soon, but mostly for the sake of making it seem like he really gave it a shot does he settle himself there. 

Suki's pool is filled with raucous party goers, some having a game of volleyball in the middle, a few off to the side playing chicken, and one or two trying in vain to relax on the big flamingo float. It's a shame, too, because the pool's a perfect left kidney Zuko would kill to curve right about now. 

He sips at his drink for something to do, looks up at the stars, and thinks about his mom. 

The stars stretch around him, uninterrupted from the height he's got on the roof, and he traces them with his eyes, finds his mom up there, and wonders painfully if this is why so many sad and lonely people turn to their Gods in the sky. If seeing the bundle of stars that is his mother's namesake makes him feel so much less alone in the world, how can anyone deny that reassurance? Zuko wishes he were weak willed enough to fall into it. He knows deep down he never will be. 

"Sifu hotman!" 

Zuko jumps at the voice despite the nickname only being possible from one little asshole in particular, and turns a halfhearted glare at him. 

"Guru goody goody," he indulges him with a nod, and Aang beams and takes the greeting as an invitation to share Zuko's little spot of peace. He doesn't actually mind. "Didn't peg you for the party boy type." Aang shrugs. 

"I'm really not. Just wanted to be with my friends, honestly," and that's so sweet Zuko wants to throw up. Or cry. Both? "Didn't wanna be home tonight," he adds on quieter, chin coming to rest on his knees, and that is something Zuko can understand. 

"You okay?" He ganders, because Aang is so unlike him that where Zuko would snap at the question Aang may take solace in it. Two sides of the same coin, maybe. Aang bites his lip, staring down at the pool some more and still strangely serious, but ultimately he nods. 

"I don't really like the foster family I'm with right now, is all." Zuko bristles instantly, but Aang catches it. "It's not like that, but it's definitely not great either. I just wanted a break from it all. Then I got here, and wanted a break from all of that, and I found you. Which is strange, honestly, because who knew we ran in the same social groups?"

Aang's more like himself by the time he gets a bit off of his chest, speaking more animatedly and Zuko feels himself smile a bit. '..are you Aang's friend?'

"I don't really know if we do. The only people I really talk to around here are Suki and Toph," he says, but Aang's still smiling at him like he knows something Zuko doesn't, but it doesn't make him as nervous as it maybe should. "Sorry, what's your name again?"

"Shut up, meanie," Aang scoffs, knocking shoulders with Zuko yet still smiling good naturedly. Zuko can't help but do the same. "So I gave you my life story, now why're you hiding out here?"

Zuko shifts, draws one knee up to his chest and tilts his head back towards the expansive sky. 

"I don't really know why I came in the first place," he answers after a beat, and Aang frowns at this, still studying his profile—his good side, somehow miraculously—but saying nothing. "I'm probably gonna dip soon."

"No, don't! Just—stay and chill with me for a bit."

Zuko slides his gaze down to Aang, who looks a bit sheepish about his outburst, but is smiling nonetheless. Zuko narrows his eyes. 

"Why?"

"Because we're friends, dummy! I never ever hang out with you, and I wanna, so stay and keep me company because I'm sad and you're a good friend." And Aang flashes him this shit eating grin like he knows what that word does to Zuko and how easily it breaks down his resolve, but he stays put even so. Aang smiles a stupid amount. It's stupid. (It's endearing)

"Why are you sad?" Zuko asks instead of acknowledging the 'friends' thing. They're friends. It's cool, and chill; Zuko has friends. It doesn't need to be dwelled on, and it won't be. Not right now. "Do I need to go beat up your foster family?" Aang laughs, and Zuko feels some of his apprehension loosing around the edges. 

"While I'd really enjoy seeing that, I'm gonna have to give a firm no on the violence front," he responds easily, and Zuko huffs a laugh. Of course. "Yeah, I'm sad," Aang repeats, and so easily and comfortable Zuko wonders how, how, how. How can you just leave that hanging in the air with a stranger like Zuko is to him? "But distantly. About bigger picture stuff, y'know. So I'm not acutely hurting but it's just.." He falters. 

"Life fucking sucks sometimes?"

"Yeah! It really does," Aang's voice is slightly airy when says it, and Zuko frowns, bumps shoulders with him again because he sucks at comfort and doesn't know what to do, but remembers Aang doing it earlier and figures it's not too much physical contact it'd be an issue. It still feels unnatural to him. "Hey, so do you know any constellations?"

Aang's deflecting, and Zuko can tell he doesn't want to talk about what's really bothering him, so he takes it, and tells him about the limited and stupid knowledge about space he's acquired throughout the years, their own space around them a slice of peace in the chaos. 

~

So, they're friends. 

Aang makes damn well sure to capitalize on that now that it's been established, and Zuko sees him a lot more than just mornings in the shop before dawn patrol—surfing, as that hot surfer guy had informed him last week. 

He hangs around the shop all the time, making fast friends with Toph and his uncle, as well as even proving kinda helpful on the customer service front. It saves Zuko from dishing out additional smiles on the daily, so he takes it and makes Aang coffee that actually tastes good in return. Zuko tells Uncle they should start paying him—Uncle gives him a smile he's not quite sure how to decipher, nor does he know if wants to yet. 

Aang, Zuko quickly learns, knows little in the ways of using music as a catharsis. He's not open about whatever's bothering him at home, but he's open about when it's happening, and so one day Zuko introduces him to music therapy sitting in one of the Jasmine Dragon's worn booths on his break. 

Aang's slumped and his eyes harbor deep bags, his smiles so much less convincing than normal. He puts on a brave face Zuko sees right through. He slips across from him with a mischievous grin, slides an AirPod across the table, and blares 'Renegades of Funk' for him for the first time. 

Watching a 15 year old kid enthusiastically bop his head to Rage Against the Machine with a pure and unabashed smile on his face is about as juxtaposed as a scene can get, but Zuko figures that maybe their friendship is kinda like that too, and rocks along to the beat with him.

Aang also skates. Bowl and trick skates like no other friends he has (okay, he has like 5, but still), and it's exhilarating sharing that interest with someone. He finds out from Suki one day that Aang also roller skates, and from this Zuko draws the conclusion that Aang's just vying to be a jack of all trades and a master of all, at that. 

There are downfalls to being friends with Aang—for one, he still makes Zuko make that monstrosity of a drink despite the fact that he's exposed him to so many more quality drinks. He has awful taste in music stemming from exclusively the top 100 charts, which Zuko's going to have to work very hard to amend. He shamelessly encourages Toph and Uncle to join him in badgering Zuko about different recipes he thinks are delicious, and makes obnoxious sounds to indicate which ones he thinks are stellar compared to which ones he thinks are excellent. He also has a way of balancing out the awkwardness that pervades the air around any given situation Zuko's in. 

So yeah. Being friends with Aang sucks. 

Except that it kind of really does, because on an unassuming Thursday that Zuko's been swindled into working morning shift on, he bounds into the store grinning. He makes direct eye contact with Zuko from where he's wiping down a booth in the corner, and moves right past him towards his uncle behind the counter. 

"Morning, Iroh!" He says so chipper and bright it makes Zuko glare. It's 5:30, no one should be awake, and no one should be happy if they are. Aang and his uncle, Zuko thinks, hoard enough cheer and chipper between them that Zuko should never be asked why he's cranky ever again. "I know he's technically working," Aang shoots a look over his shoulder at Zuko. "But do you think I could steal your nephew for the morning?"

Zuko heads that way, half curious as to what Aang has in mind and half dreading knowing it's gonna require a hell of a lot more emotional energy than a morning shift. 

"Of course!" Iroh beams, and Zuko definitely feels himself soften at that. He turns back towards the incoming customer, and Zuko slides his gaze over to Aang, who's already looking back at him and smiling. He bounces on his feet a bit, before grabbing Zuko's hand and tugging him towards the door. Zuko barely has time to untie his apron and toss it towards one of the booths before Aang has him pulled out into the cool morning. 

He let's go of Zuko's hand and grabs the giant board leaned against the side of the building, hauling it up under his arm, and the size difference is almost comical. There are white swirls painted on one side of the board, fading and worn, and Zuko wonders if he could swindle Aang into letting him paint over it. 

"Uhm, what's going on?" He asks after a minute of Aang adjusting until he gets his board under his arm comfortably. Why is that thing so big?

"You're gonna learn how to surf," he says, and Zuko can't help the laugh that bubbles in his chest at the thought. He immediately shakes his head and moves to turn back into the store. 

"No, I'm not," he says, and Aang twists and catches him by the arm to keep him in place, losing grip of the board under his arm, and drops both Zuko's arm and his board in about a 3 second period. Zuko tries not to laugh. 

"It's fun!" Aang says once he's regained himself, and Zuko watches as Uncle, the traitor, calmly heads to the door and flicks the lock, simultaneously turning the 'Open' sign off and smiling. Zuko turns back to Aang, who looks worried he's actually about to ditch him. He's used to Toph always knowing he's a sarcastic shit; he'll have to be more conscious with Aang. "At least just come hang out! Sokka and Suki will be there, as well as Sokka's sister, and-and I won't make you surf if you really don't want to, but—"

"Stop rambling, it's too early," Zuko interrupts, but he shoots Aang a smirk so he knows he's just messing around. Zuko turns away and heads down the familiar strip towards the water. "I'm not surfing, but I'm down to watch you and your friends face plant for a few hours."

"Hey, shut up! We're good, I swear," Aang says, and Zuko shoots him a dubious look, glancing down to the raw and red skin on the lower part of his calf and to the big yellow bruise on his bicep. He waves him off. "Okay, whatever. Sokka's great, at least. I'm pretty sure he's the best surfer around here."

"Hot ponytail guy?"

"You did not just call Sokka hot. He's a dork."

Zuko shrugs, unashamed. 

"But yes, he's the guy that came in the shop last week. His sister's awesome too, but she's a swimmer, spends more of her time at the pool than in the surf. But she does this really cool thing where.."

By the time they make it down to the pier, Aang's nowhere near exhausted himself with stories about Sokka's sister, and Zuko files it away for later as prime teasing material. 

Zuko's expecting the three teens lounging around in the sand next to their boards when they get to the beach. What he doesn't expect is the big white dog that bounds towards him when him and Aang get within 10 feet. 

"Appa!" Aang cries, dropping down onto his knees into the sand. The dog barrels on, however, straight towards Zuko, who treads a few steps back. "Traitor," Aang whisper-yells, but he's smiling. Zuko raises his hands as the dog starts to sniff at him incessantly. It doesn't seem happy. 

"Uhm, Aang, could you, uh—"

In one swift movement, the dogs pushes itself up onto its hind legs, front paws colliding with Zuko's collarbone and promptly knocking his ass down. Fear spikes through him, before a giant tongue collides with his cheeks, chin, nose, everywhere, and he just—

He laughs. 

In the following chaos of everyone panicking about their dog attacking this stranger Aang's brought along with him, Zuko just feels something bloom light and expansive right in his chest at the dog's unbridled affection. He likes animals. Just a little bit, though. 

"Hey there," he smiles as the dog pulls away, and the dog looks back at him, opens his mouth so that his tongue flops to the side, and near smiles. He ruffles the dogs ears as the group come to a halt from their sprint over to the scene. 

"Are you okay?" Hot surfer dude—Sokka, Zuko amends blearily—grips Zuko around the forearm, pulling him upright and the moment is gone the moment an unfamiliar pressure is pushing against his wrist. He backs away the second he's hauled up to his feet, playing it off like he's lost is footing in the sand, and shoots him a small smile. Sokka falters, hand still extended in midair and his expression draws. Not so subtle, then. "Zuko, yeah?" Sokka says, and Zuko nods, trying for another smile as Sokka comes out of his confusion and starts grinning again. 

"Okay, so this is Suki—wait, you guys are skate buddies, nevermind—and this is Katara!" Aang says brightly, bounding past Suki and towards Katara, a smaller girl with the same dark skin as Sokka and the same crystal eyes. Her hair's half pulled back, two little strands on either side wrapped and held back with little blue beads. Aang physically softens when she shoots him a smile, and Zuko wants to say something so badly it hurts. 

"Good to meet you," Katara says, her smile slipping from her face the moment her eyes leave Aang. Zuko's not sure what he's done, but he can tell she's got an issue and he's gonna pretend he's too detached from the situation to care so he doesn't get himself hurt by whatever her deal is. That'll work. 

Aang suddenly exclaims loudly and gathers her attention again, and goes on to tell her about some shit about their Minecraft server that Zuko doesn't understand. He watches Suki roll her eyes, before she heads over to where they were relaxing before and pulls off the pair of cutoffs she's wearing. Sokka heads Zuko's way. 

"His name's Appa," he says, and Zuko doesn't even realize he's been petting the dog between the ears until Sokka tilts his head down towards him. He looks cool and relaxed here, skin soaking up the first beams of light from the sunrise, hair pulled back and already sandy. His puka shells should be douchey but they just—aren't, somehow. His eyes catch the blue of the water and shine like they had no way of doing that morning at the shop, and him and his sister look like they just belong here, borne of the sea and sand. Where Zuko feels every grain of it that rests on his skin, the smudge across Sokka's shoulder and above his left eyebrow just seem to operate as an extension of him. 

Zuko clears his throat and tears his eyes away.

"Yours?"

"Aang's," Sokka answers easily, eyes trailing back down to Appa, and Zuko can't help but smile as the dog nudges at Sokka's thigh and pants up at him. "He just lives with me and Katara. Family shit, y'know?"

"That's cool," Zuko says, which only makes him acutely aware that he is not, and he doesn't know what the fuck he's supposed to say now. "So, uhm, surfing?" Excellent. 

Sokka just smiles, big and loose. Zuko wishes it was as easy as he makes it look. 

"You've never been out on the water before, have you?" He teases, though it's not mean, and almost feels more like some sort of jest between them, for some reason. Zuko shrugs and looks out at the ocean. At the waves rising and curling, churning the water and ripping up the smooth endlessness before them. It's intimidating. He shakes his head. 

"It's kinda scary, isn't it?" He blurts without meaning to, and Sokka doesn't laugh this time, and his smile droops minutely. 

"I've been surfing since I could stand, and sometimes it still feels like too much," Sokka says, and when he looks out at Pacific, Zuko sees the it crystal clear reflected back right in his irises. "But—I don't know. It's magnetic. Like, you know what you're doing is reckless, and kinda unpredictable, but you can't help but feel that draw. I don't know if that makes any sense—"

"I get it," Zuko interrupts, because he does. Knows better than anyone what chasing those thrills in life can get you, living for the moments of short lived excitement, chasing feeling anything for more than a fleeting moment, and doesn't think surfing is anything different. Wave after wave, never really knowing the outcome of each one. "Kinda like life," he says honestly, because he's weird and doesn't know how to not be so serious and awkward and seriously awkward all the time. 

"Kinda like life," Sokka parrots, nodding, and his eyes rake over Zuko, deliberate and calculated, and when he makes his way to his face, Zuko wants to scream. But Sokka's not looking at his scar. He's staring into him, searching. Zuko doesn't know what he's looking for, and he certainly doesn't want to see disappointment flicker when he doesn't find it. 

He doesn't want to dwell on the very charged moment he's holding with a very hot stranger. So he plops down in the sand next to Appa.

Sokka moves towards Suki a moment later, tucking a deep teal board under his arm and grinning at something she says. Zuko feels relief replace the tension raking its way through his system at the momentary solitude, and once more pets Appa, who's quickly becoming his closest friend here. 

Aang was right—they are good, Sokka especially. Zuko knows nothing about surfing, but it's mesmerizing, even from his spot, where he's so disconnected from it all. 

Something stirs in Zuko, sitting on that beach, but he doesn't know exactly what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Modern Zuko is a RATM fan I don’t make the rules :))
> 
> I feel like I should clarify the ages of the Gaang and co. real quick:  
> Sokka, Zuko, Suki, and Mai—17  
> Katara, Azula, and Ty Lee—16  
> Toph and Aang—15
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Sokka introspection. Zuko and Sokka grow a lot closer.
> 
> Zuko is in a surprising good mood.

It's a bad night. 

The wall's around him feel like they're caving in, and the silence enveloping him feels positively suffocating against the backdrop of the noise in his head, far too loud and pushing far too hard. Faceless people, abstract voices—ones he knows, but doesn't have the heart to acknowledge.

It's a bad night, and Sokka wants out.

Sometimes, when Sokka is feeling especially naive and desperate, he thinks that maybe he has the stomach to just up and leave, and run away from the thoughts that keep him awake at night. 

Shoving clothes and chargers and snacks into a backpack and twirling a bus card between his fingers sometimes quells the biting loneliness creeping in at the edges, dulls out the panic of the future and smooths out the edges of the past—so about once a month, he packs a bag and disappears into the night. 

He's always back before dawn, and never leaves the city limits. 

Because he's not lonely. He has kick ass friends that are always there for him, and a fortunate home life, and his dad even calls to check in and see if he's alright; things are okay, and the shop is doing well and he's surfing consistently and smiling easier, but old habits die hard, and sometimes the thought of going off the grid and leaving it all behind is the only way to make his heart stop beating so fast he sometimes contemplates going to the hospital instead of a catching Greyhound. 

He's lonely. Aching and distant, grieving years after the fact and crumbling under a facade he can convince everyone but himself of. 

He walks, because he still can't skate, up and down the main drag of the city, past his family shop and the fancy guru shop and the Jasmine Dragon, before he finally summons the courage to venture off the street and heads towards the beach. 

He's mostly talked himself out of catching a bus to Ohio by the time his feet hit the sand, but his chest is still tight and his heart still heavy, and he definitely doesn't want to go home and lie in his bed for 6 hours until it gets worse and worse. It's probably not the safest out on the streets alone like he is, but the cool night air eases that perpetuating out-of-breath feeling he finds pacing around his room all through the night. 

He kicks sand up, gets it caught under the toes of his flip flops and walks barefoot. With every thought of Katara and Gran Gran, of Aang and Suki and all of his roots here, guilt starts to take apart his anxiety piece by piece and replace it with white hot shame. Ashamed that he ever fancied the idea of leaving them all behind, of disappearing before giving things a chance to get better as they always do. 

He should probably talk to someone about all the shit going on in his head (If it weren't for the out the ass medical bills he highly doubts that his grandma's or father's insurance would even cover).

He walks aimlessly, down past the pier towards their designated surf spot and further on, towards the skate park Suki tried to teach him in a few weeks ago. It's late, but the low street lamps are still on around it, summer bugs scattering around them and casting long and warm shadows around the whole place—around a lone figure in particular.   
If Sokka were a less reasonable person, he would chalk up the familiar silhouette sitting at the edge of the pool up to fate or destiny or some shit. Because he's not, he instead chalks it up to coincidence, maybe even some wide breadth of luck. He may be a reasonable person, completely grounded in the realms of science and logic, but he's also impulsive.

Which is why instead of marching his carcass back home instead of approaching what may or may not be a complete stranger that he's given the figure of a familiar one, he heads towards the possibly familiar set of hunched shoulders. Those that look so much more at home in the light of buzzing street lamps than on the warm, sun soaked beach he'd last seen them at just this morning. 

He doesn't hang out at the skatepark; has been there maybe once or twice just to hang out with Suki and Aang as well as the one unfortunate 'skate lesson' he'd endured, which is his excuse for beefing with the gate lock for a solid minute, completely perplexed. 

Any chance he had at making a smooth entrance dissipates about 20 seconds in, and by the time he's finally got the stupid thing open Zuko—and yes, it is Zuko, he's not crazy, after all—is just staring over at him looking mildly amused and partially concerned. Sokka's not sure if it would have been more or less humiliating to have him just come over and help, but some people just like to watch the world burn, he guesses. 

"That was smooth," Zuko says, quirking an eyebrow as Sokka heads over to him. "And that's coming from me." 

Okay, so he's self aware in his strangeness, that's helpful. Because Sokka cannot get a solid beat on this kid at all, between his stiltedness at the coffee shop to his flinching at the beach this morning, he's as closed off as all be, and Sokka doesn't typically have trouble making friends, or at least getting along with people. But he's losing two for two with Zuko, and now that he's got him alone he is not going home defeated again. 

"Smooth is my middle name, baby," he replies easily, sliding down beside Zuko, who's shooting him a disbelieving look. He gestures back to the gate, wordlessly putting him in his place, and Sokka holds back his smile, standing firm in his proclamation of coolness. "So, is brooding in random locations in the middle of the night a part of the 'mysterious' image, or do you have some kind of sketchy business going down?"

"I'm not mysterious," Zuko huffs, shaking his head so that a few strands of his hair fall across his face. Sokka finds it annoyingly distracting. "And no. There's no sketchy business. I just felt like going for a walk," he answers with a shrug, as if that doesn't somehow impossibly raise more questions than Sokka had before. 

An idea comes to mind, and before he can filter himself he's spewing it at an unassuming Zuko. 

"Hey, so we don't know each other very well, huh?"

"Uhm, yeah?"

"Okay, so icebreaker game," Sokka says, beaming over at Zuko, who's shooting him a skeptical look. 

"What, like the 'get to know me' school bullshit?"

"Kinda," Sokka shrugs, barreling onward despite Zuko's skepticism. "I ask you a question, and you ask me one in return. Anything you want to know, and 100% honesty."

"What if one of us doesn't want to answer the question asked?" Zuko asks, because of course he does. Sokka half doubts he'll really get anything out of a naturally closed off guy from initiating this game, and if so it's unlikely he'll get the truth for a truth he's vying for, but it's worth a shot. At least it will hopefully get him further than his antics at sparking a friendship with him have so far. 

"Cross that bridge when we come to it?" He offers, and, surprisingly, Zuko just nods, then looks to Sokka expectantly. Which, y'know, makes sense, since he initiated this. "Honesty," he says, extending his pinky to Zuko. Zuko actually almost smiles at the action, an understated quirk of his lips, and it evokes a smile of his own. Zuko links a warm pinky with Sokka's, and they shake slightly. 

"Truth for a truth."

Sokka sits for a moment, contemplating where he should start with this, go in for the kill and ask personal questions willing to give personal answers of his own in return, or keep it lighthearted until Zuko's comfortable enough with him to trust the exchange. He figures the latter. 

"What was your favorite movie as a kid?"

Zuko stares over at Sokka for a moment, sharp gold eyes narrowing at the question, clearly expecting something different entirely. Sokka takes the moment to study Zuko's features like he'd tried to this morning, the sharp lines of his nose and cheeks, rounded out by pretty almond eyes and an expressive mouth—Sokka hopes there's no drool escaping from him as Zuko contemplates his answer. 

"I think it was probably Dark Shadows. I remember watching it a lot."

Sokka blanches, asks another question before he can help himself. 

"The Tim Burton one?" He asks, and Zuko huffs a small laugh, smiling breaking past that pretty mouth and smoothing out some of his edges. "Sorry, I know that it's a two for one but—" Zuko waves him off. 

"Doesn't count. But yeah, the Tim Burton one. I still love it," he says in the most relaxed tone Sokka's heard from him so far, and Sokka feels those last remnants of his own tension fading into the background. "Uhm, who taught you how to surf?"

"My parents," he answers immediately, avoiding mentioning either of them specifically because that in itself strikes a nerve he's sure Zuko didn't mean to. It's not fair, considering they're doing this to get to know each other better, but the baggage that comes with both the positive and negative feelings he harbors for both of his parents respectively is like, Level 10 Sokka DLC that Zuko doesn't have access to. "Who the hell introduced little baby Zuko to Dark Shadows?" Because he's still dying to know why Zuko didn't say Finding fucking Nemo or something. 

"My cousin. It was one of his favorites and he showed it to me when I was staying with him and my uncle one weekend," he answers, but he won't look at Sokka when he does so, staring deep into the bowl that their feet are dangling into, and Sokka makes note of it, adds it to his Zuko check list. Don't approach from the left. Don't touch him without preemptive warning. Don't bring up family. At least they have somewhat common ground on the third front. "First fictional crush?"

"Benny from The Sandlot. Last song you listened to?"

"Mayonnaise by The Smashing Pumpkins."

And so it continues, back and forth and back and forth for longer than Sokka ever imagined keeping Zuko engaged for when he'd proposed the idea. Sokka opens up more when it's his turn, gives lengthier responses to go along with his answers, but after so many rounds Zuko does, too—offering small anecdotes or additions to his more obscure responses, still not disclosing too much but giving enough that Sokka finds it endlessly endearing and wants to know more. He comes to the loose conclusion that, on the surface, Zuko is a nihilistic Bernie supporter with a penchant for angsty music and an understated habit of self doubt. Below that surface appears so much more Sokka doesn't even know how to begin cracking at, and isn't sure he's equipped to. At least an hour has to have passed by the time the beating around the bush stops. 

"Why were you out so late tonight?" Zuko asks Sokka after telling him about his first kiss with a girl named Mai, whom he is now close friends with. Sokka's not really surprised by the question, feeling it coming in the natural ebb and flow of the game as the questions got less light hearted and more personal. Impulsivity creeps in at the edges again, and he decides to give Zuko the truth, just as he's asked of him. Trial basis trust, or something. 

"Sometimes I get the urge to run away. I never go through with it, but some nights there's this unshakeable feeling that I just need to leave, I guess. I'm not really sure why." And yeah, that last bit is a half truth, but he's not about to lay everything out like that. And Zuko's doesn't know the difference anyways. "Why were you?"

Zuko falters, despite Sokka opening up, and looks away from Sokka in the same way he had when his Uncle's son had been brought up. So far, the only people that Sokka's gathered are fair game are his uncle and Toph, the girl that works at the shop he'd met briefly. 

"I don't know," Zuko says quietly into the space between them, and Sokka frowns. "I promise that's not me trying to cop out, it's just—like you feel the need to run away?" Sokka nods. "Sometimes I just can't be still. Kind of like running away, but more so in my head? Staying stationary when I feel like that never ends well."

And the connotations of that statement feel far too personal for their give and take, so Sokka explicitly doesn't ask him to elaborate, instead gives him a small smile he hopes is reassuring and very carefully knocks shoulders with him. For the first time since Sokka had first seen him, Zuko doesn't flinch at the contact. 

"If you went through with the whole 'running away' thing and could go anywhere, where would it be to? And I mean, really anywhere."

"Nazarené. In Portugal," Sokka answers immediately, because there's very little question in his mind. "They have these huge 100 foot waves that you can try to surf, and god, what I wouldn't give." 

He tips his head up towards the sky, let's his eyes shut and pictures massive, tsunami looking waves along a rocky coast, dreams of that feeling and that power. Zuko's quiet beside him, and when Sokka opens his eyes, his chin is tilted up too, eyes trained on the sky. His gaze is heavy, searching, and Sokka wishes he understood. 

All at once Sokka wants so desperately to know what he sees up there that's so entrancing, wants to pick apart the sadness pooling in those golden eyes, but instead asks:

"Favorite Big Gulp flavor?"

And just like that the rhythm of the game resumes, but Zuko very pointedly discloses as little as he can until they part ways around 3 am. It'll take a while, and Sokka's not sure he'll ever have his footing, but if the hesitant smile and gentle wave shot his way at the end of the night is any sign, he's made a bit of progress in chipping away at the ice between them.

~

"Hey, how did you and Zuko become friends?" Sokka asks Aang three days later when he's got the whole group over for movie night. He catches Aang alone when he goes to make popcorn while the girls debate what movie is their pick for the night. He figures it's as good a time as any to learn Aang's secrets and mystic ways. Something like that. 

Aang looks perplexed by his question as he pulls himself up onto the counter, waiting for the butter and oil in the pan to heat up enough to put the popcorn kernels in. Sokka seats himself at the counter island and waits. 

"I'm not entirely sure we are," Aang says, but he's smiling when he does so, and from Sokka's observations it seems that their friendship is built on this mutual brand of teasing neither of them take too seriously. "Honestly, I don't really know. It just kinda happened over night. I'd thought we were friends for a while, but Zuko didn't seem to think so until I actually spelled it out for him. He was less hesitant, after that, but I also think that that hesitance is kinda just a part of who he is."

Sokka nods, acknowledging in his head that Aang is definitely right on that front. He's not a meek person, per se, but a certain level of shyness seems more natural than any spark of extroversion. It makes him harder to get to know, but also keeps him running around Sokka's thoughts day after day. 

He thinks of sad golden eyes and long nimble fingers; a flash of ink peeking out from under a sleeve. 

"He's funny, isn't he?" Aang says after a beat, dumping a bunch of popcorn kernels into the pan and shaking it slightly, a fond smile on his lips. "I like him. I know he can be kinda standoffish and difficult at times, but—I don't know."

If Sokka were feeling back to himself, he'd have some quip or joke to shoot back at him, but his head is still fuzzy, and he feels everything kinda introspectively opposed to just laying it all out there as he normally would, so he just nods. But Aang's simply the best, and doesn't mention Sokka's uncharacteristic silence and instead just tosses him a cosmic brownie from the cabinet. 

"I don't know either." 

~

Outgoing message to: Zuko?? (4:37 pm)

hey! wanna meet up and do something tonight??

Sokka stares at the message, feeling like an idiot. Why is this so hard? Every message feels too stupid or too enthusiastic to send to someone like Zuko, but he wants to take initiative on this, because it's clear that Zuko probably won't. 

Fuck it. He sends the message and throws his phone to his bed, following after it. He's just a cute boy. 

A cute boy who texts back damn near instantly, it seems. 

Incoming message from: Zuko?? (4:38 pm)

Possibly. Depends on who this is 

Contact name changed. 

To: Zuko (4:38 pm)

shit sorry man it's sokka!! i got ur number from aang bc i wanted to see if u wanted to hang

From: Zuko (4:41 pm)

Ohhh, hey. I honestly just said that because I figured it was a wrong number. I can't tonight, my uncles out of town and I'm closing the shop for him. I'm sorry. 

Incoming message from: Zuko (4:42 pm)

Another time though??

To: Zuko (4:42 pm)

hmm how busy is the shop right now??

From: Zuko (4:42 pm)

Dead as fuck. I've had like 5 customers in the past hour

To: Zuko (4:43 pm)

:))))

From: Zuko (4:43 pm)

????

Sokka bounces back off of his bed as quickly as he'd settled in, mind now bent on settling into the Jasmine Dragon for a few hours before Zuko closes up. Katara's working a shift with Gran Gran at the shop, and Suki and Aang are both under house arrest (Suki for the party two weeks back and Aang—well, because life just kinda sucks), and he's bored out of his mind. Zuko must be too, between hours at the shop fluctuating between customer service mode and no customers at all—really, Sokka's supposed to just pass up that opportunity?

The house is too big and too quiet as he clambers through it, every creaky stair and lose floorboard amplified without the white noise of his family. Even Appa's gone, spending the day at the shop with the others. Momo's unsurprisingly nowhere to be found, but even besides this is by disposition a silent killer. 

He feels relief overcome him the second he hits the streets, between the group of kids skating along the street towards the park to the rumble of cars and the various tourists traipsing up and down the strip—it's alive, and moving, and Sokka can kinda feel himself being hoisted out of his slump at the thought. 

Zuko definitely wasn't kidding about the Jasmine Dragon being dead. When Sokka breaks apart those familiar twin suns and enters the shop, there isn't even anyone in the booths sipping lukewarm tea and scalping the place for its free Wifi and Iroh's notorious free refills. The only one there is Zuko, hunched over the counter, scribbling something in a rich red notebook with a focused expression on his face. He startles when the bell above the door jingles. 

Startles, and then, much to Sokka's surprise, a smiles graces his lips and some of the tension exhales from those slumped shoulders. 

He's got his hair pulled in an extremely loose ponytail that's falling to the side, more hair out of it than contained in the purple scrunchie hung on his shoulder, and he's wearing a big and flow-y loose fitting white button up (with the signature green apron over top), luminescent against the pale tones of his arms and the bit of collarbone he's got exposed from the first button. It's a good look. Really good. 

"Surprise?" Sokka says after a beat, extending his arms and waving his fingers for the effect. Zuko shakes his head at his antics and sets the pen he'd been holding down as Sokka approaches. 

"You have no idea how good it is to see you," Zuko says, and oh. Sokka blanches, knows that he's speaking generally and that he's likely been alone for the past few hours, but still that's. Nice. 

"I mean, I figured hey—we're both dying of boredom, may as well share the moment and have something come of it," Sokka says with a shrug, and he heads over to the little round table that's closest to the part of the counter Zuko's behind. Again, to Sokka's surprise, Zuko doesn't hesitate in rounding around the counter and taking the seat next to Sokka, slinging the apron over the third chair at their table and tossing both his notebook and pen onto the table as well. 

Sokka distantly registers Bowie playing in the background, and relaxes into his seat a bit. 

"Truth for a truth?" Zuko offers, and god, he's just full of surprises today, huh? Much more animated in his movements and eyes, looser and more fluid, and Sokka wants to know what's changed. Whether he's done something right to establish this newfound comfort or if Zuko's really just had such a shit shift that he's grasping at straws. Or the third alternative, and that Zuko's just been in a bad mood for their past encounters and is now in a good one. It's possible. Sokka nods. "Cool. Favorite Beatle?"

"George Harrison. Where were you born?"

"Correct answer. Seattle. Take a guess at how many marshmallows you think you could fit in your mouth?" A surprised laugh startles out of Sokka, both at the question and the mischievous look that flashes in his eyes as he asks it. 

"A lot. 20, maybe?"

Zuko leaves abruptly; returns a song or two later with two cups of steaming tea and a bag of jumbo marshmallows and plastic trash can. He shoots Sokka an expectant look, raising a sharp eyebrow as he takes a long drink of his tea. 

Turns out it's a meager 12 that Sokka manages before nearly missing the can while gagging them up onto the mahogany floor. He's sure it's an attractive look on him, but certainly not as attractive as Zuko with his head tipped back laughing, sun accentuating his features from the windows at the front of the store and casting the scene in a warm golden glow.

"You're a dick," Sokka says without malice, which coaxes another small laugh out of Zuko before he's able to regain himself. 

"I didn't say you had to do it! I merely..presented the opportunity?"

Sokka flips him off. 

"Okay, why are you wearing a fancy ass dress shirt to your shift at the coffee shop?"

"Tea shop," Zuko corrects with a smug smile, still lose and toothy from his outburst. Looking like that, Sokka doesn't even have the heart to roll his eyes. "It's my uncles shirt. Because some prick decided to throw his coffee all over mine." Sokka nearly chokes on the tea that he'd taken a perfectly timed drink of.

"I'm sorry, what?" Sokka finally gets out after a coughing fit that has Zuko looking amused for the first half and concerned the other. "You're joking." Zuko shakes his head. "Why?"

"You've clearly never worked customer service," Zuko says with an inward smile, and no, in fact, Sokka hasn't, because no one stabs you with shells or gems at a jewelry store for no apparent reason. "I don't know, I'm not too bothered over it. I'm sure that whatever he was going through is more important than my Pixies shirt, so it's fine."

And that sounds like some first hand regurgitated therapy bullshit, but Zuko says it somewhat genuinely and god, if someone threw coffee at Sokka he'd probably wring them out. If he saw someone throwing said coffee at Zuko he'd probably do the same. 

"What, you don't like the button up?" Zuko says after a beat, gesturing at the billowy white shirt and yes he fucking does but that is certainly besides the point. The new point being—with that look and gesture, words said in a distinct tone—is Zuko flirting? It's playful, surely, but at baseline Zuko is just uncharacteristic today. Sokka likes it, but he desperately wonders what's changed. 

"Oh, no. I definitely do." The blush that rises on Zuko's cheeks is satisfying, and Sokka revels in the fact that Zuko doesn't bristle and shut him out immediately. Sokka's self aware enough to admit that there's no playfulness intended in his flirting. But Zuko isn't ready for that conversation yet. And maybe Sokka isn't quite either. "Okay, your turn."

Zuko hesitates for a beat, bites his lip and looks down at the table before them with a slightly forlorn look, and this is more familiar. 

"Why are you trying to be friends with me?" He asks after a few more moments of hesitance pass, and when he finally looks up at Sokka he looks a bit lost. Sokka misses that playful smile so badly it strikes through his chest, but maybe this is the first step in ensuring that it'll be present more often. If he doesn't fuck it up, that is. 

"I like you," he says earnestly, leaning forward into Zuko's space just enough that it solidifies his point but doesn't push him away. "Yeah, you're cryptic, and I don't know if I know you even half as well as I think I do, but I think that you're funny, and cool but awkward at the same time? In a good way, though. And you have great music taste and unique ways of looking at things, and I think that you'd be a really interesting person to get to know."

"I-I'm not," Zuko says near instantly, and Sokka frowns. "I like you too, Sokka. But there are things about me—parts of me—that I don't know you'd be okay with. That I'm not okay with. Things that I can't escape." Zuko pointedly looks up at Sokka, golden eyes burning and Sokka can't look away. That fierce look, impassioned words—yeah, Zuko's absolutely fooling himself if he thinks Sokka isn't already a goner. 

When he keeps leveling Sokka with that look, he starts to understand he's talking about that irate scar on his face. And whatever baggage there is that comes with it. Sokka's not about to let Zuko's openness and trust in disclosing this information lull any sort of vibe that they've had going tonight, but he's also not about to let Zuko believe that that's going to scare him off. No way. 

"Everyone's got their own shit they're dealing with, and it doesn't dissuade me from wanting to get to know you. I want to be your friend, and I like you, it's as simple as that. Give me the chance to prove you wrong," he challenges, and Zuko doesn't look back up at him, doesn't even say anything, but he also doesn't entirely shut down. And he's still sitting across from him, toying with the edge of that worn notebook. Which Sokka decides to turn his attention to in hopes of engaging him once more. "Anyways, it's my turn. What were you drawing when I first came in here?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know Zuko’s resident sad boy, but I kinda wanted to establish that Sokka’s going through stuff too. At least they’ll have each other soon enough ;)
> 
> Also I’m sorry this ends so abruptly?? It was turning into a monster of a chapter and so I split it down the middle, the next chapter picks up literally right after this one ends, just from Zuko’s perspective.
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko’s good mood persists. Sokka gets an unexpected skating lesson.

Zuko shows him his turtle ducks. 

He confronts Sokka about his intentions, and then Sokka asks about his drawings. Because Sokka's sole purpose is to throw Zuko off his game, apparently. He's happy to oblige, of course, anything to mask the fact that he's probably just insulted Sokka severely when all he's been trying to do is be a nice guy, but still. Turtle ducks. 

"They're so cute?" Sokka says, though it's more a question as he leans forward and tilts his head to get a better look. "I love them. Congratulations, Zuko, you've ruined all living creatures for me now. I only want turtle ducks."

"You're ridiculous," Zuko replies instantly, because they're kinda ugly and scruffy compared to how his turtle ducks usually look. He vows to draw Sokka cuter ones. The cutest ones. 

"So you just came up with them? Like Napoleon Dynamite or something?"

Zuko falters, both not understanding the reference and hesitating in telling Sokka the true origin of the creatures on the page. He doesn't ever want to bring up his family, any part of it besides his uncle, really, but Sokka literally just said that he just wants to be friends—that he doesn't care about his baggage. And he doesn't care about any of it now because he doesn't know, Zuko's not naive enough to believe anything else, but he's not pouring his heart out with this. He's just explaining stupid little drawings he does that just so happen to have severe emotional ties to his past. Really, it's his fault for having his feelings so caught up in everything he does that it's just become a game of roulette guessing what's going to set him off. That's not Sokka's fault, and he doesn't deserve that. 

And besides. It's a good day. He feels better than he has in weeks, clear and light, and he can do this. 

"My mom came up with them, actually," he finally answers, and sees Sokka blanche slightly, fingers curling around the page, and Zuko pauses for a moment, taking in Sokka's reaction. A sore spot for him too, maybe? "She was into the arts, and I really liked animals as a kid, so whenever I was sad she would make up new ones to make me feel better. Turtle ducks were always my favorite, so I still draw them a lot."

He doesn't mention using drawing as a coping mechanism through hours of therapy, months of trial and years of stress. Through losing his mom and getting her back twice over. Drawing to keep his father's presence at bay; watching pages of expression and catharsis curl and disintegrate under flames by the man's hand just as he did. 

"Do you still make new ones?" Sokka asks, gently and soft, and Zuko watches his finger twitch on the table next to Zuko's, knows he'd reach out if they knew each other better. 

He wonders what that would be like, thinks about Aang's frequent contact and Toph's affectionate punches. His uncle's casual yet purposeful touches throughout the day—even the few moments of contact he's shared with Sokka the few times they've hung out. He's still scared on some level, maybe always will be, but the growing amass of people around him is softening those edges out, slow and careful. The implication of the trust around those touches feels much more terrifying that the actions themselves. 

Zuko forces himself to nod, separating from his reverie and forcing himself back to the present. Back to Sokka. He flips his journal over to different pages. 

He's not necessarily proud of the stuff in it. It's mostly just things he's sketched out during down time during shifts, mostly just insignificant doodles and abandoned pieces, so there's no point in trying to hide it away if Sokka's really interested.

He shows him some of his moms designs—the badgermoles, wolfbats, and koalaotters—and when Sokka keeps leaning forward, asking questions and making comments on some of the shitty little margin drawings Zuko's done of plants and flowers and some of his smaller-scale dragons, he shows him his own little creations.

The badgerfrogs and lion turtles; Sokka is particularly fond of the fire ferrets. He doesn't normally talk to anyone about the shit he draws, considers it more an extension of him than any sort of special talent that teachers and most adults have tried to tell him it is in the past. His best friend is blind, after all, and no one really asks besides his uncle.

"Wait, did you do all of this?" Sokka gestures around the Jasmine Dragon, eyes tracing the lines of the mural and the dragons behind them. Zuko feels some kind of flurry expand in his stomach at his wide eyed expression. It's not butterflies, though—definitely not. He nods. 

"When we first bought the place. Uncle let me do it when we were first developing and everything. Stress relief, y'know?" 

"That's so cool!" Sokka exclaims, and Zuko watches for a languid moment as Sokka bounces up from his seat, bounding over to the wall and looking at the art with some newfound adoration. Zuko feels something similar blossom in his chest, and it's definitely not because of the mural. "Hey, can you paint my surfboard?"

"Sure?" Sokka barrels on. 

"Seriously, man, this shit is amazing, you should go to, like, art school or something! I thought maybe you guys commissioned it, but it's all you—hey, what's with the blue guy? I mean, he's super cool, but I don't really recognize him?"

He looks over at the mask himself, frowns deeply at the thought of that particular story, but gives Sokka the cliff notes anyways. 

"It's from an old Japanese novel called Love Amongst Dragons. It was translated to a play, and that's the mask from the adaptation," he explains, and Sokka's eyes are bright and fascinated and why is this stuff so interesting to him; why, why, why..

Sokka sits back down and smiles over at him, soft and kind and—fuck.

"That's really cool, Zuko. You're really good."

"I—" I'm not, he wants to say, but maybe Sokka really just is nice like this, just like Aang is. Maybe his uncle and Dr. Piandao are right. Maybe Zuko's just been around shitty people so much he needs a reality check. Maybe he needs to stop being so closed off all the time. Maybe. "Thanks, Sokka. My turn, right?" 

Sokka's easy to talk to, even more so on days like today where Zuko feels so good. And he likes their little game, no matter how on edge he feels that the shoe is going to drop and it's gonna cut too deep too quick. Zuko's afraid of the aftermath of a nerve being struck, already can tell that he'll miss Sokka if something like that happens despite their short time together. And that's pretty scary, all things considered. 

So why does it feel so good?

~

Zuko comes to watch them surf again in the morning again four days in a row. The first time Aang invites him, and the second Sokka cowboys up and does it. Toph tags along the second time. The third and fourth they show by their own accord. 

For claiming not to be a morning person, in Sokka's eyes Zuko sure does seem to light up under the sun, basking and glowing in a way no one that's truly nocturnal could. It's distracting, watching him play fetch with Appa in the sand or phase out listening to music as he watches them. Sokka's a good surfer, solid and balanced, as sure-footed as they come, but watching Zuko is sometimes more entrancing than the rise and fall of the tide, and he loses himself in it and succumbs to the waves more times in those days than he has in the past year. 

He'll take a few sand burns strewn across his body if it means seeing Zuko rise and blossom along with the morning sun like this. Zuko might say he isn't a morning person, but Sokka would place his bets with Zuko being far too gone into exhaustion at any given point to recognize that he truly is before he'd ever believe it after what he's seen. 

Sokka hopes that hanging at the Jasmine Dragon after dawn patrol becomes tradition, hopes that summer days like this will stretch on forever, surrounded by both the people he loves and new friends alike. Dreads the coming months and stress with a nagging voice in the back of his head during his happiest moments, but Sokka's nothing if not skeptical, and placing his skepticism in his dread instead of hope this time will maybe land him on his feet. Maybe. 

It's going well, getting the whole gang to accept Zuko and Toph into the group. And Zuko's been amiable and light for days, glimpses of a different person Sokka so desperately wants to know slipping through the cracks of his walls like light shining down in beams through clouds. They're getting there. 

~

Zuko teaches Sokka how to make cookies one afternoon after their other friends have cleared out of the Jasmine Dragon to catch a movie neither of them have any interest in seeing. 

Cooking is hard, and they get burnt so black they're not able to be salvaged because Zuko won't help him. But with Zuko laughing unabashedly like this at Sokka's expense, he'd burn them a thousand times over, would make a fool of himself until the end of time if it meant keeping even a fraction of that lightness in Zuko for more than a few beautiful moments at a time. 

Sokka's got a crush. 

~

From: Zuko (7:56 pm)

Hey, what're you doing rn? 

Sokka's been pestering Katara for the past hour while she's been on FaceTime with Aang when the message comes through. She's past the point of being annoyed with him for making crude jokes, and has resorted to physical violence which is not okay, and he will report it. Aang, the bastard, just laughs. 

To: Zuko (7:57 pm)

getting beat up by my 16 year old sister pls save me

"Who's Sokka texting?" Aang calls from Katara's Mac speakers. Katara looks to him for an answer, and he shrugs. If they don't know him and Zuko have been texting nonstop the past two-ish weeks, then that's not on him. 

From: Zuko (7:57 pm)

Hmm in that case I'll leave you to it, send Katara my best

To: Zuko (7:57 pm)

NO WAIT PLEASE CAN WE DO SOMETHING

so bored, so sad :(

From: Zuko (7:58 pm)

Sad?

To: Zuko (7:58 pm)

not rlly, but if it'll get u to hang out w me then yuss

From: Zuko (7:58 pm)

I'll hang out with you anyway weirdo

Meet me at vsp in an hour

Sokka's not too prideful to admit that it took him 20 minutes of deep thought to register ‘VSP’ as the skatepark they met up at week before last (God, have they really only been friends that long?), and by the time he does so Aang and Katara have gotten tired of pestering him about who he's going to hang out with and have given up. 

As he tugs on his converse and a loose Pink Floyd shirt, he thinks about how different they are a mere few weeks later from where they were that first night at the park. They've only hung out a few times since then, between days at the shop and mornings of Zuko watching them surf from the beach with a wistful look in his eyes and headphone tucked into his ear, and yet Sokka feels like they've made astronomical progress. Both vulnerable and hurting that first night, Sokka wonders if Zuko feels the same in that that night played out exactly how it was supposed to. He hopes he does. 

He chucks his phone, wallet and additional pair of flip flops into the bag, because if growing up on the beach has taught him anything it's to always have a spare pair. 

(If he throws two pairs in there, that's no ones business but his own)

By the time he's finally out the door, Katara's heading downstairs as well to meet Aang at the door, having progressed from FaceTime to movie night. Sokka loves Aang, he really does, but that's his little sister, and he has to both embarrass and annoy her come hell or high water, so he shoots Aang a serious 'I'm watching you look' that makes Aang pale and Katara scoff indignantly. Satisfied, he heads off towards Zuko and leaves them to it. 

He doesn't have any reason to be anxious until he makes it to the empty skatepark, only to find Zuko doing maniac tricks on a tiny board. He immediately pales at the sight of a second board on the picnic table next to a bag that Sokka can only assume belongs to Zuko. 

Zuko dips down into the pool, the lull of the wheels rushing across the pavement the only sign he's still there until he comes up over the lip a moment later, board suspending a few feet in the air as his legs tuck up under him before he's down into the bowl again. Sokka swears his heart drops, because there's no way on something that small he didn't just spill onto the concrete. 

He rushes forward, leaning down to look down into the pool to make sure the crazy bastard is still alive and nearly gets knocked back by Zuko coming back up to do it again, free smile lighting up his features. Zuko being endlessly pretty doesn't distract Sokka from how scary the shit Zuko's doing is, and he yelps and jumps back at how close Zuko had just come to knocking him backwards with that maneuver. Zuko just laughs, crystal and bright like he had that day Appa had pushed him over. It was also the first time Sokka had seen him smile. 

"Hey, Sokka," he calls as he glides down in the bottom of the bowl, taking the small bumps and curves of the terrain with grace. He holds out both of his hands and does an exaggerated shaka. "How's it hanging?" He says in a deep, very clearly mocking surfer-dude voice, and if it weren't such a severe dip Sokka would leap into the pool and tackle him to the ground. Well, probably not, but still. 

Instead, he flips him off and goes to sit on top of the picnic table, completely content to just chill and watch Zuko do his thing (despite how nervous it makes him because how?) for a while, just as he has with their surfing. He's intrigued, even, because he's never seen Suki doing shit like that, mostly sticking to quads for Derby and street skating. 

But no such luck. Zuko does the maneuver a final time and this time uses the force of the move to propel himself over the rim, easily getting his footing back and coasting over to Sokka. He grins in a way that makes Sokka's heart beat like he's just shotgunned a Red Bull, and he's not really sure if it's nerves or Zuko. Likely the latter, but he'll blame it on nerves. 

Zuko does that skater thing where he pops the end of his board with his foot and catches the nose of it with his hand and sets it next to the other board beside Sokka. 

"You ready?"

"Uhm. Ready?" Sokka startles, and when Zuko shoots him a look he understands what's coming and immediately starts shaking his head. "Nope. Nuh uh. Not happening. Sorry, no dice, 0% APR financing, buddy—"

"Come on," Zuko interjects, reaching over to dig into his bag. Sokka takes the moment to take in Zuko while he's not zooming around on the death wood (good band name), and appreciates the faded AC/DC shirt tucked into loose fitting ripped up jeans, little inked up spots here and there that make Sokka wish they were static enough right now that he could ask Zuko to show them to him. Zuko finally leans back and Sokka stops ogling the view to watch Zuko fiddle with his phone and connect it to the Bluetooth speaker he'd conjured. "Why else would I invite you to an empty skate park?" He asks, and Sokka can't argue that it was an oversight on his part, so he doesn't. 

"Thought I was safe, considering last time we were here," he says honestly, and Zuko seems to consider this for a minute, before finishing off with his phone and shrugging unmercifully. Music starts playing between them tinny and flat, but Sokka wouldn't have it any other way with Zuko looking at him all at ease and relaxed, the dark night around them making it feel like they've carved out this little piece of Venice Beach just for them. 

"Do you trust me?" He finally asks, and it throws Sokka off guard, because he sounds so serious, and his eyes are so earnest—and yeah, he finds that actually he does, which surprises him most of all. When he nods, Zuko gives him a small, inward smile, and grabs the other board that he hadn't been skating on and sets it on the ground between them. 

Sokka watches as he sets it in front of himself, taking his right foot and pushing it back and forth a bit in front of him before looking up at Sokka. 

Out of all the shocking things Zuko's done in his pervading good mood, holding out his hand to Sokka is the most jarring of all. 

He takes it, slowly and carefully, and is acutely aware that this is not only the first time that Sokka has seen Zuko voluntarily make physical contact with anyone, it's the first time the two of them have intentionally touched for more than fleeting and passive moments. That knowledge makes the moment somehow feel so much more emotionally charged than it should be, but maybe is. 

"If I do this," Sokka says, looking down at the board then back up to Zuko, who's staring at their hands as if surprised even himself by the contact, "then you have to let me teach you how to surf."

Zuko nods near imperceptibly, finally looks away from their hands and at Sokka. Even though he's not on the board, Zuko doesn't let go. His hands are warm, but not clammy. Soft. 

"Deal. You're gonna fall, by the way," he responds easily, as if slamming into concrete and cracking your skull isn't terrifying. As if he couldn't die making one mistake. Is this how Zuko feels about the water? "It happens to everyone."

"That's not very reassuring," Sokka says, even though for some reason it kind of is? Or maybe it's Zuko's tone and expression. Or the small laugh that comes following Sokka's words. What is positively reassuring is Zuko reaching back into his bag a final time and conjuring a black helmet, dented and peeling, and forcing it onto Sokka's head. It's snug and maybe a little too tight, but Sokka instantly feels a lot better about their whole arrangement. 

"Put your left foot here," Zuko demonstrates by putting his foot on the center of the board, forward just a bit. "You're gonna push off with your right. Skating goofy is the opposite of that, and since you're left handed if this doesn't work we'll try it that way."

"How did you know I'm left handed?"

"..I just noticed." There's so much Sokka wants to unpack there, so, so much. 

Instead, he listens as Zuko tries to explain to him how to maneuver one of these things and knows already from experience it's a lost cause, but if it keeps Zuko this close, keeps his hand clasped in his and his voice unwavering, then he'll fall time and time again just to stay like this. 

He falls. Zuko catches him. 

And honestly, it's pretty terrifying, yeah, but it goes astronomically better than it had when Suki and Aang had tried to teach him at the end of the school year, and there's the added bonus of Zuko time, which is rapidly becoming something Sokka is dependent on. He's not a skater—can barely go a few paces before stumbling forward or backward and forcing Zuko to have to steady him again—but he's doing it. And it's kind of fun?

"It's kind of fun," he repeats to Zuko when they've exhausted themselves for the night, sitting (well, in Zuko's case lying) on top of the picnic table and passing a Mr. Pibb back and forth between them. Zuko smiles up at him, and there's no way that Sokka can't smile back. "Scary, but I don't know. I think I can see the draw."

"You never have to wait for the perfect wave," Zuko says, shrugging slightly and gently plucking the can from Sokka's fingers. It's a miracle he doesn't waterboard himself drinking from his position. "Or risk drowning."

"I'll make a surfer of you yet, young padawan," Sokka says with a placating pat on Zuko's shoulder, and he shrugs him off but more playfully this time, less scared. 

"You won't let anything happen to me out there?"

"Promise." He holds out his pinky to Zuko, watches as he stares at it for a moment, before ultimately links his own. His hand is extended far enough away from Zuko that instead of shaking it like they had last time they were here, he leans forward and tugs their linked fingers closer to him, placing a kiss to his end of the promise. Zuko's features tighten a bit at the action before he brings their hands down to his lips and places a gentle kiss to his end.

They walk down the beach for a while, neither wanting to go home yet, and conversation flows easily between them even without their little game. Present Sokka pats past Sokka on the back for having the foresight to pack an extra pair of flip flops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just,,I love the atla fauna so much I had to squeeze it in there somehow. 
> 
> I meant to have this update up yesterday, but didn’t wind up having enough time to proofread and publish in timing, so hopefully more Sokka/Zuko bonding makes up for it??
> 
> Also, I just wanted to say that I’ve been writing forever but this is my first published fic ever and the thought that people have actually read this is insane?? I’m so appreciative of every read and every comment, my heart honestly just soars. This fic has been my baby this summer and it’s mostly been self indulgent, but all the positive feedback is absolutely bonkers. Thank you so, so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy the update. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang comes to Zuko with a problem, seeking understanding and comfort that Zuko struggles understanding how to supply.
> 
> Suki has her first roller derby match of the summer, and Ty Lee and Mai make an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER!! Mentions of abuse regarding two main characters is heavily alluded to and discussed; I updated the tags for this, but also want everyone to stay safe out there and give fair warning. Angst is really dialed up to 11 with this one.

"Zuko!"

Palms slamming flat against the counter make Zuko jump, pen flying from his fingers and notebook sliding forward a few inches. Suki, who Zuko recognizes as the perpetrator the moment he looks up, catches it easily before it falls off the edge. She grins at him, and Zuko takes note of her messy hair and the roller skates on her feet. She sets either of her elbows on the counter, propping her feet up on her toe stops and looks up at him. She slides a bright pink piece of paper to him. 

"We got confirmed for our first match," she says, smile somehow growing wider as she speaks. Zuko raises an eyebrow and looks down at the paper, feeling a smile of his own take form as he realizes what it is he's looking out. Roller derby. 

"Holy shit. You've got an arena and everything?" Suki's smile morphs into a slight grimace at his question, but she doesn't loose enthusiasm as she explains the situation to him. 

"Sort of. Not an official one, or anything, but we've gotten approval for the same banked one they built in that warehouse last year that I was telling you about. We've been practicing a flat course, but we're gonna have a few team scrimmages to get in the swing of things before that first match," she taps her finger on the paper, "which is actually why I'm here."

Zuko raises an eyebrow at her, watching as she drums her fingers on the counter and tries and fails at biting back her smile. He leans forward on his elbows, mirroring her, and grins sharply. 

"First scrimmage. This Thursday, starting at 8. Everyone's gonna be there, and you have to go, no choice—"

"Yeah, duh. Of course I'll be there," Zuko interrupts, and she falters, face freezing on the words for the case she was about to start making, but Zuko refuses to let her. He wants to go, wants to support her in the thing that she excels at and see her in action. And moreover, roller derby is just badass, and he's endlessly excited from an objective point of view. 

"Awesome!" She says after a beat, making no notion to hide her shock at his amenability, but at the same time teeming with untapped excitement. She jabs a thumb back towards the doors of the shop. "I've gotta go, but do you think you could do me a favor?" 

Zuko rolls his eyes, already knowing exactly what she's about to ask, and nods. 

"You want me to invite Ty Lee."

She's the one bringing it up, but she makes an affronted noise regardless, and Zuko revels in the blush that blooms across her high cheekbones. Hopeless, the both of them. Ty Lee is anything but subtle in her gentle prodding about Suki, and Zuko's been in the middle since he first introduced them when Ty Lee and Mai first came to visit him when they got home from school for the summer. The only one in on the charade with him is Mai, who besides offering passive support harbors none of the same amusement factor that he does. Or at least used to harbor. 

He'll keep playing phone tag between them for now, but at this rate he's not sure either of them will make a move. Intervention will be needed at some point, and Zuko is nothing if not a man of the people. 

Zuko's already pulling out his phone and shooting off a text to the group-chat he has with Mai and Ty Lee as Suki manages to regain herself, and by the time she's saying a fast and panicked goodbye the text has been sent and Suki will now have to deal with the results thereafter. He's a man of the people, but an agent of chaos all the same. 

Suki, sure footed and balanced as can be, trips on her way out the door.

~

Zuko has this running conspiracy that the Jasmine Dragon exists solely to act as a conduit between his friends, conspiring both with and against him at any given time and always without warning. 

Suki, Aang, Sokka—somehow, the shop acts as a middle ground, a steady background to pinnacle moments with all of them, like the one that Zuko can see unfolding and blurring around him the moment Aang walks through the doors ten minutes before closing on Wednesday night.

Zuko's settled into his rhythm by then, any coworkers long since sent home and music louder than it should be as he sweeps and tidies up aimlessly until he can lock the door and stop pretending to look busy. With Uncle up in the city for the night, it's eerily quiet, but he makes as much noise bustling around as he can to make up for it, and it's just him and Robert Plant. Until Aang. 

Aang, slumped and stumbling, pulling at a door he knows is a push and bumping into tables as he heads straight towards the counter, not even noticing passing right by Zuko on his way there. 

Zuko sets the broom down against the booth he'd been sweeping under, letting it clatter a bit and dragging heavy steps as he goes around to come into Aang's vision before he says anything. Zuko's especially set on edge when Aang catches sight of him, his whole body jolting—flinching?—and snapping into a shallow and unconvincing shell of who Aang usually is. His smile pulled too tight and a posture normally bouncing with untapped energy now wound with tangible tension is unsettling. Unnatural for a by disposition happy-go-lucky teen. 

"Hey, buddy," Zuko says carefully, looking down and taking note of the way Aang has his left hand carefully cradled in his right and Zuko—freezes. 

Sees dark mottling around the soft and fragile skin there, and feels cold, cold dread sink it's venom into his blood. 

"What happened?" He grits out, feeling white noise shrieking around him as imaginary answers fill in the blanks, worsening with each second Aang stands quiet and still. Please don't say it, he thinks somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Anything but that. 

"I—I'm fine," Aang says after too many still moments pass, voice high and strangled, and it seems to startle him, even. He shakes his head, drops his wrist and does an awful job of concealing a wince. "I'm fine," he repeats, and it's better, but Zuko knows now, and even if he didn't initially, he's hardwired to notice those waivers, could spot that something was wrong from a mile away just from that heaviness hanging in Aang's features without him even realizing it. 

Trauma has a real nasty way of making itself known no matter how hard you try to obscure it. This Zuko knows just as well as the sun rises and falls—knows with the same certainty what those bruises mean, and that this is the accumulation of the offhanded comments and half truths he's gotten out of Aang these past few weeks.

Zuko sits him down. Brings him tea. Feels like screaming the whole time he closes the shop at the utter wrongness of everything. 

When he looks back, Aang hasn't touched the tea, has surrendered himself to staring down at the table, back to cradling his wrist. Zuko doesn't look at it, instead tries to catch Aang's eye and nods his head towards behind the counter when he does so. Aang holds his gaze and just—doesn't move. 

He just looks back at him with those big eyes, shining and intense, features drawn all tight and mangled, and Zuko understands it's himself he's trying to convince he's fine. Zuko knows the truth, so instead of vying it out of Aang he thinks about Aang's casual touches, about hanging off of Katara and Sokka all the time, and quells down his own anxiety at the thought. He carefully slides into the chair next to him, takes a risk and moves his hand so that his pinky bumps against Aang's elbow softly, and the floodgates open. 

Aang throws his arms around Zuko's shoulders, buries his face into the crook of Zuko's neck and all Zuko can think about is the blessed fact that Aang's face is still dry and his body still. The tears haven't come, and Aang's a tough kid so maybe they won't, but Zuko's got him now. Whatever shit he came from, he's safe for the moment. 

And yeah, to Zuko it feels somewhat unnatural having arms wrapped tight around his shoulders, his own arms around Aang's back feeling robotic and somewhere just on the cusp of uncomfortable—but this isn't about him. It's about Aang, who chose Zuko, of all people, to confide in with this. Aang, who hardly so much as drops a grin throughout the day, and is now scared and vulnerable with only Zuko there to help—

Aang, who really, really needs a hug right now.

So Zuko pushes aside his discomfort, focuses on his friend, who needs help. Focuses on figuring out what he can do to assist, and how he can push down this raging monster screaming inside him so that Aang doesn't think that anger is directed at him. 

"You wanna stay here tonight?" He finally asks as Aang pulls away and straightens. He stops bothering with the pretense of putting on a show and slumps into his chair, arms crossing over his chest and head tipping back to look up at the ceiling. His eyes shut after a beat, and Zuko leaps at the opportunity to eye him thoroughly, take note of any other possible out of place blemishes he didn't see this morning. 

"No," he finally says, and Zuko immediately shakes his head, because it was only phrased as a question to soften the blow. "I'm okay. I just—I just had to leave. I made my foster dad mad, it was my fault, really. He just needs time to cool off, I think. I can probably sneak back in a bit—"

"No," Zuko interrupts, and his voice sounds strangled and rough to his own ears, and when Aang looks over at him with wide and concerned eyes Zuko knows he's not concealing his feelings well. 

But it's Aang, who's sunshine incarnate, who brings people together and holds himself tall around all of their friends so that they don't worry. Who puts everyone before himself, and who wiggled his way into an empty spot in Zuko's heart that he hadn't even know was there. A 15 year old kid, who may fuck up and make mistakes as all teenagers are wont and expected to, but never, ever deserves to be grabbed so hard that it fucking bruises. 

The words 'it was my fault' swim around Zuko's thoughts, too familiar and close to home, and he suddenly doesn't give two shits what Aang could have possibly done. Aang deserves nothing but that same tenderness and kindness he graces those around him with. Every kid does—guidance through mistakes rather than punishment. Softness in the place of rough edges. 

Zuko just wishes he had the resolve to say it all out loud without losing his cool. 

"No?" Aang repeats, voice small and hardly carrying the small distance across the table. He swallows hard, features drawing ever tighter and jaw setting. 

"Nope. You're staying here tonight," Zuko says with a tone of finality he recalls his mother used to use—not unkind, but no bullshit. He rises from his seat for emphasis, heading back towards behind the counter. 

"What? No, I don't even know what I was thinking coming here, I'm honestly fine. Everything's gonna be okay, and man, I definitely don't wanna impose on you, especially for no reason like this, and for sure not Iroh—"

"Uncle's out of town," Zuko interrupts his rambling, and when he turns and sees Aang still sitting too stiff and tense in the chair goes back his way. Carefully, he places a hand against Aang's shoulder and guides him up, kicking his chair back into place behind him. "And you're not imposing," Zuko pauses as he switches off the lights in the shop, hesitates and deliberates on the words he wants—no, needs to say—before settling on: "Not with this. Never with this, and never with me, okay?"

(Because somehow speaking the word 'abuse' seems much more daunting than alluding to it, despite none of it fucking mattering because it's happening whether Zuko has the guts to say it or not.)

Aang looks lost, young and vulnerable and that expression just digs right into Zuko's heart, spikes through him and punctures every bit of his insides, and he's not equipped to deal with this. He's the last person Aang should have come to, still unstable and riding a fresh and tender fluctuation of his own trauma. Should have gone to Katara and Sokka, or Suki—not him. Too wrapped up in his own shit to even properly give him a hug, too mangled in his thoughts to rationally conceptualize and accept what Aang is going through without thinking of his own experience. 

"Thank you," Aang finally says, words heavy and dripping with the things neither of them can say. Zuko smiles—would hedge money on it looking like more of a grimace than anything—and slings an arm across Aang's shoulders. He leans into the touch, leaning against Zuko almost fully as he guides them through the back room and towards the first level of the apartment. 

He settles Aang in on the couch with the softest blanket around, sets another pot of tea to brew—because regardless of his protests he's becoming his uncle—and then turns to look at Aang from where he's standing in the kitchen. 

"Is it sprained or just sore?" He asks, and hates the way Aang jumps, feels dread curdle sharp and painful in his gut. 

"Huh?" Is all he manages, eyebrows furrowing and head tilting slightly. Zuko would probably try to soften his words in maybe a more verbose manner or with a small smile or something, but doesn't even realize he can't manage it until he's already speaking. 

"You wouldn't cradle your wrist like that if it was just bruising. We should probably ice it."

And so they do. 

Zuko makes more tea that they don't drink, and they ice his wrist with a bag of frozen peas. Aang settles into the couch and buries himself into the blanket, somehow finding a way to prop up his injured hand with the ice outside of his little cocoon while managing everything else. Zuko sits on the other end of the couch, legs tucked up under him, and rallies his thoughts in his mind, grasping at the most sensible way to approach what they do next. Silence stretches on heavy and thick. 

"I—I thought maybe you'd get it," Aang finally says amidst the chaos of Zuko trying to form a coherent and efficient conversation starter. "Some of the signs were pointing in that direction and I just—I trust you. You're the only one I thought might get it." 

Zuko short circuits a bit, of course partially at Aang's openness alongside his trust in someone he's known for, like, a month, but more so at the implications of his words. Of signs pointing in a certain direction that indicated Zuko would know what to do in this situation—a lifetime of purposeful concealment and cover up cause a spike of panic to strike through him. 

"Are you going to tell anyone?" Aang adds after a beat, voice hardly concealing his concern. Zuko snaps out of his own selfish reverie and immediately shakes his head. 

"Not without your permission," he answers, and Aang exhales, his body slumping down and relaxing further. But Zuko still has to fledge something out there before they move past this. "Look, I'm not gonna make you talk about it. But I'm here, okay? And—and you're right. I do get it. So if you want to talk, I'm here." 

"Thanks, sifu hotman," he whispers, tilting his head so that it rests against the back cushion of the couch. "I don't really want to talk about it. Not specifics at least, but just..he's scary. Quick to anger, and stuff. I stay out of the house as much as possible."

Zuko nods, bites back the questions he has in respect for Aang's wishes not to talk about it. 

"Well, you're always welcome here. I'm positive uncle would say the same." Aang frowns all of a sudden, brow furrowing once more and eyes narrowing. 

"Hey, where is he tonight? You said he's out of town?" And it doesn't really seem like deflecting, more just Aang's natural inability to stay on a particular topic without bouncing to the next, despite how heavy the shit they're talking about is. Or maybe especially because of that. Either way, it's almost reassuring, because this is more like the Aang he's used to. Familiar territory, and all that. 

"My family has a business based in LA—a, uhm, big business. Uncle still has a hand in some aspects of it, and so he goes up there sometimes to deal with it and stays overnight," Zuko answers, and it's about as non-discretionary as he can get, but still makes a shiver run down his back at the thought of that era of both his and his uncle's lives. Groomed to be a CEO, destined to be a family failure. 

"Oh. Cool?" Aang offers after a moment passes and it becomes clear Zuko's not about to offer up anything else, but he says it in a way that indicates he understand how explicitly not cool it really is. Zuko knocks Aang's leg with his foot and shoots him what he hopes is a more at ease smile. From the one Aang gives him back, he figures he does a pretty good job. 

"Wanna watch Jersey Shore reruns?"

Aang falls asleep slumped over on the couch soon enough, and Zuko would feel guilty about not preemptively offering up a guest room if it weren't for how comfy he looks balled up on the couch. Zuko carefully removes the wet and soppy bag of peas from its place and tugs the blanket over the exposed wrist as gently as possible. 

He sits alongside Aang on the couch as hours tick by, waves of exhaustion creeping in and fading away sporadically. Aang hardly stirs, but all the while Zuko waits for the fall that's bound to come. 

Eventually, Zuko's dry eyes are forced to come face to face with the bright morning light. 

~

Suki's roller derby match gives Sokka the opportunity to do the things he does best without shame—support his friends, make as much noise as he wants, and eat a lot of food.

When he pulls up to the old warehouse around 7:30, Katara and Toph in tow, he feels raw excitement flooding through his system, feeding off of the two buzzing girls around him as they search for the remaining parts of their group. Katara's calling Aang off to his left, arm hooked around Toph's, so Sokka takes a look around the lot around them. 

Cars line the torn up parking lot tailgate style, groups of people from all walks of life milling about and making their way towards the open doors of the warehouse. Music thrums from the building, and the large paned windows glow from the warm light within. Sokka especially appreciates how, particularly against the bright setting sun, everyone's shiny and flashy outfits stick out, the beams of light picking up the glitter and spark both within attendees attire and makeup. Some are done up in a similar fashion to the Kyoshi Warriors get-up their team is known for, but others just extravagant and striking for the sake of it. Because they can. Guys, girls and all others under the sun—Sokka aches distantly with the desire to do the same, but apprehension overshadows his lust and he quells it down. 

He knows it's okay, of course, but—for some reason it feels like a hard thing to wrap his head around for it to be okay for himself. 

He shakes himself from that particular train of thought, feeling it too all consuming and feeling to light to sacrifice that feeling to asking and analyzing some of those more important questions. He follows after Katara and Toph towards the large open doors, and feels the unwelcome heaviness in his chest drift away amidst the energy and atmosphere of the arena. 

He lets Katara lead the charge and push her way through the crowd towards—Sokka assumes—Aang and Zuko, and keeps his eyes trained on the banked track, on the members of the team warming up, practicing different stops and falls. 

He grins as he watches Suki, face done up in full Kyoshi makeup, messing around with a few of the other girls on the team, balanced on her skates and graceful without thought. All of them are, and Sokka suddenly recollects the fear he'd felt every time the board had even slightly evaded him during his time skating with Zuko, and he somehow harbors even more respect for the Kyoshi Warriors now than he did before, and he didn't even know that was possible. 

He tears his eyes away and narrowly avoids colliding with Katara's back. 

Zuko and Aang have nabbed stellar seats up in the rafters, right up against the iron railing and with a perfect view of the arena below. The banked benches built all around the building are simple and a bit shoddy, but Aang seems to be harboring no reservations, sprawled across the one closest towards the front, arms hanging down so his hands brush the floor and his grin so wide it's almost disconcerting. Zuko's up against the wall on the same bench as Aang, rolling his eyes at Aang's antics and smiling and yet—it doesn't quite hit. 

Sokka tries to catch his eye as Katara greets them. He's not successful. 

"Oh!" Aang sits up abruptly, and Sokka forces himself to stop overthinking things, instead watches as Aang sits up and swings his legs around to face the two girls behind them—who up until this point Sokka had figured were other attendants that had picked strangely close spots. 

The one on the right, closest to the wall and in the row above Zuko, levels Sokka with a steeling gaze when she catches him looking, inky black hair half pulled back and half down, long and lithe body draped in heavy blacks directly out of the back rack of a Hot Topic with the eyeliner to match. He quickly averts his gaze and finds her polar opposite on the left, a bright smile rivaling Aang's greeting him, which he shoots back. A long braid runs down her back, across her patched-and-pinned jean jacket that's overtop of her pink slip. 

"This is Mai," Aang gestures to the princess of darkness, who gives the group a nod as greeting, "and this is Ty Lee!" The bubblegum princess, who flashes the group a somehow brighter smile and peace sign. "They're friends of Zuko and Suki, too, right?" Mai merely nods, while Ty Lee seems to jump at the opportunity to converse. 

"It's so great to meet you guys! I've heard a lot about you from Suki!" She says, and that raises a lot of questions to Sokka, partially because they've heard nothing from Suki, but moreover because they know Zuko. Have possibly known Zuko for a lot longer than any of them have, which means maybe they're a part of that cryptic and underlying part of himself that he doesn't fledge our. 

"I'm Sokka," he blurts when a beat of silence passes, because it's one too many and he doesn't want it to drag on under the expectation of this transition going seamlessly. Katara and Toph are quick to follow his lead, and once Aang gets the conversation flowing between the girls, Sokka focuses in on Zuko and snags Aang's seat at his side as the others settle in around them. Zuko looks over at him and shoots him a smile, marginally more convincing than the first one but still just—flat. 

"You okay?" Sokka asks immediately, finding no point in beating around the bush at this point. Zuko will tell him what's up, or he won't, but either way Sokka's going to be there. 

"Mhm," he hums, nodding his head slightly and dragging his heavy gaze away from the skaters and back to Sokka. He visibly falters, one corner of his mouth ticking downward as he deliberates. "Didn't sleep well last night, is all," he finally says, and Sokka wants to ask why, but doesn't want to push that hard. Not when Zuko telling him that at all is progress in itself. "You excited?" Zuko tacks on, clearly deflecting and yet shooting him his smallest yet realest smile yet. 

Cute, Sokka's brain supplies very unhelpfully. 

"Super excited," he answers with a wide grin, mirroring Zuko and leaning forward on the safety railing to stare down into the track.

"I haven't been to a match since uncle and I left LA," Zuko says, catching Sokka completely off guard. He pointedly doesn't make a scene of the disclosure of information, makes sure he stays as casual and contained as possible. "Suki came up to me and stsrted telling me about the team at the park one day, and that's how we became friends," he continues with a small huff and inward smile, and Sokka feels his own involuntarily creep up on him.

Somewhere in the time between settling in and the start of the match, Katara and Aang head off to pick up concessions for everyone from the food trucks vending outside. When they return, Sokka now nacho clad and happy, conversation flows easy and painless around them, Ty Lee and even Mai seamlessly blending into the dialogue about the match and through that skating. It's natural and relaxed, but Sokka is hyper-aware of Zuko silent and zoned out not even a foot away from him the whole time all the while. 

When the game starts, it's a blur of high energy and lots of noise. Fitting pop punk bumps around them, as fast and driving as the girls skating the track. Sokka watches them take hit after hit, back up immediately and amiable and playful with their attackers and feels waves of admiration and respect crash over him. He sings along to Green Day in between sets with Aang, coaxes Zuko into joining in between the second and third games when Dani California plays and gets some of that heaviness to dissipate from his features for a while. Cheers as loud as can be when Suki scores again and again as the lead jammer and secures winning points for the teammates that she's with for all three of the scrimmages they play. 

By the time the matches for the night have wrapped up, Sokka's yelled his voice raw and has smiled so much his cheeks hurt, but is still coasting on waves of excitement and secondhand adrenaline as they all are. The crowd mostly disperses out to the parking lot in the minutes following the end of the match, but Sokka suggests they wait up in the rafters to meet up with Suki before heading out, which is how a kickback for the group starts to take form. By the time Suki shows up, still breathing heavy but beaming and energized, it's all mostly settled. 

"You were fucking insane!" Sokka says before wrapping her in a loose hug that she quickly reciprocates with a bright laugh, pulling away and pushing at him playfully. 

"Yeah! You were, uhm, you were really amazing out there!" Ty Lee says, and Sokka raises an eyebrow at the wound tone, and her sheepish smile. When Suki blushes and stutters out both a greeting and jumbled thanks, puzzle pieces start to fit themselves together. He looks up to catch Zuko's eye and share the moment of hesitance between the two girls and ensuing amusement with him, but instead is met with Zuko's retreating figure, familiar drawn shoulders immediately catching his eye. 

He doesn't think as he makes his way through the now mostly dispersed crowds and after Zuko, who's managed to slip out one of the side doors on the lower level undetected by everyone but Sokka. Sokka's not naive enough to believe he's just going out there for just some fresh air, and briefly prepares himself to approach whatever's plaguing Zuko's mind as carefully and cautiously as he can—to not come at him too strong and heavy handed. 

When Sokka finds him, he's leaned up against the worn brick of the building, in a more secluded area away from a lot of the rowdy derby fans and players, and he has his face tipped up towards the sky as Sokka's seen him do before, eyes pressed together this time. Sokka takes the moment to study Zuko's profile, takes note of his drawn features despite his seclusion and otherwise private surroundings, the way his body is loose against the building, propped up nearly wholly and yet still appearing so tense. 

"Is that your Linkin Park shirt Aang is wearing, or is he finally coming into his teenage angst?" 

Zuko's eyes fly open, immediately snapping towards the source of the voice and yeah, Sokka definitely could have been smoother but had instead opted for trying to lighten the mood. He realizes, with a jolt, how awkwardly he's standing off to the side by the door, and moves to join Zuko against the building. 

"I'll make a punk out of him, just you wait," he says, slumping back against the wall again. He keeps his gaze carefully trained to the ground now, and Sokka wishes he knew what to do—knew what kind of comfort Zuko needed, what it is that's too far and what it is that's not enough. It's all just too unfamiliar, and too dangerous to tread blindly. But he just—just wants to be there for him, and feels utterly helpless. 

"Hey, so, I think I'm just gonna go home," he says after a moment of Sokka being too wrapped up in his thoughts to account for how it looked from Zuko's end. "I'm just—I'm really tired. I don't think that I'll be a very good time, anyways. So. Yeah, I'm sorry—"

"Don't be," Sokka says immediately, even though the thought of a house party is significantly less appealing without the prospect of spending time with Zuko. All the same, he definitely doesn't want Zuko there if it's too much, regardless of his own selfish reasons. "Really. It's okay," he emphasizes, and Zuko exhales long and slow, some of that tension finally releasing from his shoulders, and Sokka frowns, hopes desperately that he knows he is never, ever obligated to do anything he doesn't feel up to. 

"Thanks, Sokka," he whispers into the night, and as he straightens and conjures a small keychain from his hoodie pocket, Sokka knows that he's slipping away from him; that something really is wrong, despite what Zuko says, but he doesn't know what, and even if he did, doesn't know that he'd know how to help. Doesn't know much of anything, it seems. 

Watching Zuko head out into the parking lot with that tension still racking his body feels like a door is closing, feels like the tentative trust they've garnered is crumbling at the edges because of Sokka's inability to do the right thing here, something already so fragile threatened by uncertainty. Outside factors are causing this rift, but it's a rift all the same. And that, to put it simply, sucks. 

Sokka stares after the spot Zuko once occupied long after he's gone, and thinks long and hard about all the pieces of the puzzle he has, tries to connect them together to form some semblance of sense about the whole situation. Despite how long he reflects and rearranges the jagged pieces he's got, he's no better off for it by the night's end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!!! I absolutely hate this chapter :)) 
> 
> This wasn’t even in the outline of chapters I had initially, but a lot of what was going on in chapter 6 between Sokka and Zuko and moreover regarding Aang’s storyline overall necessitated a chapter like this one. 
> 
> I just want to say that the feedback I’ve received on this has been astronomical!! Thank you all so, so much for reading and commenting, and I hope to have a better chapter up for you guys as soon as I’ve got it proofread.
> 
> Also I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but the title for this story actually had little to do with any kind of allusion to the ocean when I chose it, but because of the Gorillaz song Aries! Pretty much the whole time I was outlining this I had it on repeat and it pretty much encapsulates the whole vibe I was striving for.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko tries a new approach to dealing with his emotions. It may or may not be working in his favor.
> 
> Sokka worries, worries, and worries some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of kinda ehhh stuff happening before a whole lotta upcoming cuteness, please don’t hate me for another shoddy chapter <3

The summer before junior year is a hazy and unpleasant blur that he tries to avoid thinking of as much as possible, but when by chance Zuko reflects back on it, he can pinpoint three things: migraines from hell, Jet's vice-like touches, and the sound of Lou Reed's voice. 

That same voice that's protecting him from the space surrounding him now, loud and driving and blocking out everything else, if only for the time being. Fending off the swallowing and all consuming melancholy creeping in around the edges and the flooring anxiety driving forward from the recesses of his head. 

The thing is he really should get out of it—should have gone to that party, even if it sounded like the furthest thing from reprieve he could get. He shouldn't have ditched out on Ty Lee and Mai after being the one to invite them, shouldn't have left Aang despite the fact that he's been nearly attached to his hip for the past two days; definitely shouldn't have left after seeing that harrowing look in Sokka's eyes. At least he'd have been distracted, could have inevitably bummed something off of someone, and wouldn't feel guilt on top of everything else—

But no. When Zuko thinks of coping that way, fuzzy images of big houses and flashing lights, pounding music and hazy senses drag him under, and he thinks of the blacked out patches of his life he's trying to come back from. Backed by the thought of bettering his circumstances, he reasons that it's for the best that he's here instead. Despite how pathetic he likely looks shut away from the world and drowning in music and solitude. 

Finally being alone doesn't give him release from the gnawing panic clawing at his ribs, and doesn't chase away the phantom pains racking his whole body—he feels less self conscious about being so bugged out and freaked, but beyond that feels no better off for it. He feels with a sense of sinking dread that he's bound to be out of commission for a while, and wants to cry. 

He feels cried out before the tears even come, though, and as the hours tick by, each one signifying yet another he's gone without sleep and coaxing the exhaustion to taint him even further, he begs and begs to just sleep. 

His eyes close, and he sees flames. He sees huge hands, sees amber eyes, and stark crimson blood against white marble floors, and just feels worse, and worse, and worse, and it won't stop.

Sleep comes, restless and fitful, so much so that somewhere in the morning after the sun has come up uncle slips into his room, wordlessly handing him melatonin tablets and a glass of tepid water. Zuko doesn't question it, doesn't bother acknowledging the new day upon them and instead accepts his fate and falls back into a sporadic sleep. 

Somewhere around noon he wakes up for good, eyes still itching from exhaustion and desire to slip back away, but he physically can't. Everything feels warped and liquid, and Zuko focuses on the lone bare patch of wall across from him so he doesn't feel sicker than he already does. Stares and stares, purposefully unthinking and numb. He listens to traffic outside, to horns hocking and the infrequent voice that carries up through his open window—tries to focus on life continuing on around him in hopes of the premise willing him to do the same. 

He checks his phone, feels both lifted up and brought down by the messages he's received, undeserving and guilt stricken. 

From: Aang (10:37 pm)

you okay?? :(( Sokka said u dipped

From: Aang (11:22 pm)

want u to know i just shotgunned a red bull in ur honor, ty lee has pics for proof xoxo

also she's wearing suki's team jacket?? pls fill me in on the details next time we hang omg 

From: Aang (1:36 am)

everyone but me is drunk this is so funny i have sooo many snaps to show u

From: Aang (8:48 am)

img_668.jpeg

just so u can wake up to a sick pic of willem dafoe >:))

To: Aang (3:24 pm)

Thank you, you're a blessing

Sorry I left. Feeling marginally better rn

Zuko doesn't deserve Aang's immediate response. He knows this, and yet the clenching in his chest doesn't necessarily feel as unpleasant as it should. 

From: Aang (3:24 pm)

don't be sorry!!! it's really fine like duh we missed u but it's all good 

speaking of tho,,am i the reason ur upset

To: Aang (3:25 pm)

Of course not. Not your fault at all, just brought up some shit I wasn't ready for n I got knocked on my ass, but it's def not your fault

Seriously, please don't think that 

Zuko quickly leaves his chat with Aang and moves on to the other unread messages waiting for him; a few memes from Toph as well as some—what he can only assume are—drunk texts from her and Suki as well. A few messages in the chat with Ty Lee and Mai, one from just Ty Lee about Suki. Five from Sokka. 

From: Sokka (10:25 pm)

hey. i'm sorry if i made you uncomfortable or anything, i just kinda could tell u weren't ok and didn't know what to do. i should've said this before but i'm here if u wanna talk ab anything, but u don't have to

From: Sokka (11:54 pm)

i didn't wanna pressure u, pls don't shut me out

party's kinda lonely without u, wanna talk ab music n shut

imy :(

From: Sokka (11:23 am) 

i'm now sober (tho achingly hungover), but stand by what i said. i'm here for u, man. 

Zuko shoots up off of his bed and throws his phone back towards it, scrubbing his hands over his face roughly and tugging at the roots of his hair. 

They don't even know him, not really. Not Aang, not Suki or Toph, not Sokka—by some breadth of luck boosted by caution, none of them have broken through to that gross and muddled inside part of him. That part that even Zuko himself isn't sure he understands, where bouts of anger and mania fight against paralyzing depressive episodes against his will. 

He doesn't understand how they can just care so simply and wholly, can try to be friends with someone so purposefully cryptic and misleading. He's not a good liar, and he harbors no doubt that they all—Sokka, especially—know when he's deflecting and bullshitting. Can tell when he's skirting around truths he hides so far away they blur and mix until brought forth at the most inopportune moments. 

People need people, he hears Dr. Piandao repeat over and over in his head. 

He feels wobbly and unsteady on his feet and slumps down to the floor, pressing his back up against his bed and hanging his head between his knees. He feels his phone vibrate and screws his eyes shut. 

He doesn't want it to stop, and that in itself has got to be one of the most terrifying things he's ever had to face. 

He doesn't want the texts to stop. Doesn't want to lose Toph's constant and grounding presence, her punches and dry comments. Doesn't want to lose Aang's trust, lose the inside jokes and the juxtaposed and yet somehow unstoppable force their friendship has become. Doesn't want to lose skating with Suki and sharing music and references, always grinning and emotions expansive. Doesn't want to lose the hesitant friendship he's seeing the beginnings of with Katara, endlessly kind and doting, but tough as nails and as kick ass as they come. Doesn't want to lose—well, everything with Sokka.

Doesn't want to stop feeling again.

Because even if it's terrifying, and the thought of losing all of this at the drop of a hat perpetually hangs over his head, he feels alive. He feels the high highs, bright and sweeping, just as he feels the lows right now, which sucks, but at least it's not nothing. Sadness can be helped, worked though, maybe even put into words at some point; shit that can't happen if he just feels empty and void.

He pulls himself up off of the floor.

He showers; scrubs and scapes away at a few days worth of bullshit until he feels new again. Comfy band shirt, soft sweatpants. Phone in his back pocket, filled with messages from people in his life that care, even if just for the time being. Thinks of the man downstairs, endlessly supportive and kind never asking anything of Zuko—sacrificing everything for him. If not for himself, Zuko can be better for them. Can pick himself up and put the pieces back together while moving on this time despite everything in him screaming to crawl back in bed for another three days, alone and safe. 

He combs out the knots his pillow have left in his hair and pulls it back. He feels somewhere close to human again opposed to the remarkably human shaped piece of shit he did before, so he calls it quits with nothing fancy and heads downstairs. 

Iroh's back in the kitchen, elbow deep in a bunch of dishes. He promptly drops one when his eyes catch on Zuko.

Which, yeah, makes sense. He's been known to be out of commission for days, longer even. From what uncle is to expect, he's out of order for a considerable amount of time longer. But he's switching it up, for better or worse. Probably worse, but for now change feels—not abjectly horrible?

"Zuko," he says after a stagnant beat, and Zuko shoots him the most convincing smile he can muster. He feels it tug and pull at his face too sharply, too unnatural to mean anything other than the flat reassurance it's meant to be to his uncle. 

"Hey," Zuko says inadequately, shoving his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. He kicks at the flat and boring tile of the kitchen, wishes he could sink into it, wishes he was back in bed— "Do you..do you need help with anything?" He asks instead of following his instinct and removing himself from it all. 

"No," he immediately says, and Zuko falters, feels himself retreating, retreating, retreating, but: "No," he repeats, sighs heavily and shoots Zuko a smile over his shoulder. "But I think that you should go out there, anyways." And that tone means he's up to something—Zuko knows it all too well. In a better place, he'd have probably realized his antics are always harmless, but right now, it just sends a spike of panic through him. 

"What?" Zuko blanches, but Iroh just keeps on smiling, shakes his head and drying off his hands. Zuko just keeps staring after him. Quiet grows palpable and lengthy between them, and Zuko wants to squirm. 

"Nephew, I—" he cuts himself off, and Zuko watches the smile drop from his face, watches apprehension take its place. His hands wring together, extending them and bringing them back down to his sides in a vaguely familiar gesture. Zuko knows what's happening, wraps his head around it before Uncle finds the right words, and beats him to it. 

He wraps his arms around him, an action that hasn't been repeated since the final day of a rocky custody case, the last time he'd seen his dad, and Zhao, and Azula—nearly half a year ago. His uncle doesn't move, hardly even breathes, but Zuko holds on, thinks of everything his life that's gone wrong, and thinks of all the things going right. How he's changed since his mistakes, how he can continue on making different choices so they don't happen again.

Uncle's arms gradually come up around his back, wind up into the soft fabric of the back of his shirt and hold fast, just as strong and tight as Zuko. And it's okay. Iroh has never hurt him—never will, Zuko thinks with certainty—and it's okay, he can have this, and it can feel good. And it feels great, actually.

"Thank you," he says for everything, pulling back and tugging at his shirt, crossing his arms up around him tightly. Iroh's eyes are wet and his smile is piercing, and Zuko still isn't quite sure he's a fan of hugs, when he sees it. Hugs themselves, maybe, but between Aang on Wednesday night and Uncle right now, there's a vulnerability there that just—leaves everything out in the open. The lead-up, the embrace itself, the come down; it's all just an accumulation of emotions. In some ways, a physical representation of everything Zuko's spent his life shying away from.

Zuko may be trying something new, but he's still, deep down, a chicken shit coward, so he turns towards the doors to the Jasmine Dragon and pushes down the guilt crawling its way up his throat. Uncles not upset, he repeats like a mantra on his way out, but his thoughts cease when he sees Suki, Sokka and Aang engaged in an aggressive and raucous game of Uno at what has to be the center-most table. 

~

Sokka powers through a shift at the shop. He's been mildly hungover and increasingly stressed all day, but he powers through, and by the time 3:30 rolls around he's ready to just get out and do something. Katara tags him out on the dot, and he books it home, phone heavy in his pocket with unsent messages to Zuko.

Five is probably too many already, but still. He's been blindly entertaining the idea of some magic keyword, some special arrangement of the same words he's typed and retyped all day that will give him some clue as to what he can do to help. If he even can help, if Zuko trusts him enough to. 

Is going to the shop too pushy? Too forward and direct for the point their relationship is at? Even besides Sokka's feelings muddling the borders and boundaries of what's too much, they're friends. Close friends, at least Sokka thinks, so it wouldn't be weird, right?

"Hey." 

He nearly barrels right into where Aang's sat on his front porch steps, chin in his knees and balled up as small as can be. He's seemed off, too, in momentary lapses these past couple days. Aang's usually a bit easier than someone like Zuko, though. Either he'll want to talk about it, or he won't. Either way, hugs are encouraged, and whichever way the coin lands Sokka's got his footing with the kid. The same cannot be said for Zuko. 

"Hey," he parrots, forcing some semblance of cheer into his tone. "What's up? Katara's at the shop with Gran-Gran for a few hours, so—"

"Yeah, no, I know," Aang interrupts, uncurling himself and stretching his legs out in front of him. He takes a long and deep breath and looks up at Sokka. "I wanted to know if you wanted to go visit Zuko with me. Or try to, at least. I know you've been worried. Suki's gonna head over there in a bit—"

"Yeah!" Sokka clears his threat, reigns himself in. "Definitely. I'm gonna go change, you wanna come in, or?" He jabs his thumb towards the door, but watches the way Aang leans into the streaks of light angling down from beneath the overhang and knows the answer. 

"Nah, go ahead. I'm gonna call Suki and tell her to come get us."

Sokka pops open the screen door and lets Appa rush past him and towards Aang and bounds up the steps two at a time. He tugs on fresh shorts and a fading Sublime shirt, fixes his hair back up into a neater ponytail. He probably makes record time, back down the stairs and out the door before he can even wrap his head around the in that Aang has just given him in suggesting they go see Zuko. 

Aang has a lap full of Appa and is occupied by some silly game on his phone when Sokka plops down next to him. Aang doesn't bring up the unspoken Zuko situation that hangs between them, and Sokka doesn't push him for the answers he knows lie in whatever it is that happened between the both of them. Instead, Aang goes on about whatever new show it is he's been watching, enthused and lively as if nothing's wrong. 

Sokka wishes that were true. Hopes that maybe after tonight that'll be true, at least on some level. 

"I think we should take Appa," Aang says in between his tangent, and Sokka raises an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue. At the look, Aang shrugs. "Zuko likes him."

And Sokka definitely can't argue with that, not when Zuko smiled so bright and genuine that first day on the beach. Which somehow now feels like a lifetime ago to Sokka. 

Suki shows up in her beat up Honda minutes later, honking egregiously and yelling out her window before she's even come to a full stop. Aang bounces up, rushing to claim shot-gun as Sokka clambers after him too late to do anything about his fate. He tugs on the door fruitlessly and pounds at the window, before rounding around to Suki's side to hop in and letting Appa follow. Chances are Iroh will be okay with him being there, anyways and if not—if not, they'll just wait outside in front of the store, or something. Doesn't really matter, Sokka thinks, as long as sees Zuko, gauges how he's feeling and (hopefully) is given a moment alone to talk to him. 

"Alright, let's go get our boy," Suki announces as she peels back out onto the road, and Sokka knows he's not necessarily the safest driver out there, but Suki's hellish driving takes the cake every time. Katara's of course the best out of all of them, and when she turns 17 in December there's no doubt she's their designated driver. For now, they make do between Sokka and Suki, and unfortunately the latter at the moment. 

Suki plays good music, though, so she gets a pass. 

The Jasmine Dragon is considerably chill compared to how it usually is when they're there in the morning. Sokka doesn't see Zuko behind the counter through the window, but he holds out hope and trudges in anyways. Aang bounds over to where Iroh is chatting with a few customers in one of the few full booths, and Suki leashes Appa and tugs him in after them, garnering a few looks from some of the patrons. 

"Aang!" Sokka hears Iroh greet sunnily, and a smile overtakes his features. Aang reaches up and tugs an arm around the back of his neck, a quick and fleeting hug, before turning and gesturing back to Appa. 

"Is it okay if Appa's here? We came to see if Zuko wanted to hang out, and figured he may want to see him. Appa, that is.."

Sokka focuses in on one of the small pictures hung up amidst volumes of others, magnetic and perplexing at the same time. Zuko, no younger than he is now, with a little girl on his shoulders, grinning widely and tugging at his hair, a soft smile of his own playing at his lips that's eerily similar—

"Right, Sokka?"

Sokka blinks over at Iroh and Aang, who both harbor of similar look of amusement. Somewhere in the background, Suki wrestles with Appa to keep him from going after the pastries behind the counter. For some reason, this is what Sokka's brain decides to focus on instead of the conversation he was supposed to be a part of. Luckily, Iroh spares him. 

"I'm Zuko's uncle, Iroh," he introduces, and yeah, Sokka knows, but he's suddenly acutely aware that they've never actually been introduced. Sokka scrambles. He's older; older people shake hands and stuff, right? Sokka extends his hand. 

Iroh laughs, hearty and full, and wraps his arms around Zuko in a short embrace as he had with Aang moments before. Sokka feels something warm and sluggish bloom in his chest at the sight of it and smiles. Iroh smiles back, but Sokka notices how it doesn't meet his eyes. He looks away. 

"Is Zuko here?" Sokka blurts, suddenly acutely unable to beat around the bush any longer, what with the normally jovial man's expression so achingly wan. 

"He is," Iroh says slowly and carefully, and Sokka casts a glance over to Aang, who looks about as worried as Sokka feels. "He is not himself, however," he continues, and Sokka feels dread pool in his stomach, stagnant and forceful. "I have a few things to wrap up in the back, but if you'll wait here for a bit I can go see how he's feeling for you."

"That'd be great!" Aang says quickly, managing to sound much more cheery than Sokka would have managed, so he's thankful. "Thank you!" He tacks on, and Sokka watches as Iroh returns back behind the counter and towards the back room. Aang tugs him towards the table that Suki's managed to get Appa to lie down under and feels a buzzing numbness pervade his body. Please be okay, he thinks blearily with a side-long glance towards that swinging back door. 

Sokka allows himself to be swept up in the deck of Uno cards Suki's conjured from her purse, throwing himself into it like he usually would all the while pushing down the nagging negative worries about Zuko. 

When Zuko finally appears from that same swinging door, looking exhausted and slightly pallid but no more worse for wear than he usually is, Sokka feels relief crash over him in overwhelming waves and feels for the first time since he'd left the arena last night that maybe things aren't completely ruined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t proofread this because I really wanna get it uploaded before conking out, so I’m really sorry for any grammatical mistakes and such! I’m a sleepy loser I’ll make it up to y’all 
> 
> The ending to this is super strange and abrupt, but the next chapter pics up right where this leaves off, I just wanted to post at least something, even if it’s just this
> 
> This chapter is superrr meh. I’m sorry for two like that in a row, but I’m really, really hoping to have the next chapter, which I think is a lot more fun and fluffy, up at some point tomorrow (or today I guess?? I really need to go to sleep yikes).
> 
> Thank you guys for reading and commenting; over 1000 reads???? Absolutely insane!! Thank you for all the feedback and support :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of Chapter 6. Sokka, Suki, Zuko and Aang all take a little field trip. Zuko reflects on his feelings for Sokka.

Zuko's eyes widen when he sees the group, whole face briefly brightening before confusion takes its place and he heads over to their table. 

"Zuko!" Aang cheers before Zuko even has a chance to take in the scene before him, launching himself up and barreling towards him at the speed of a freight train. Which, yeah, Sokka thinks, same. 

Zuko looks past Aang and back at their table, eyes darting between and even down to Appa for a brief moment, meeting Sokka's eyes and holding for just a second longer—Sokka smiles at him, and Zuko visibly relaxes a bit. 

He stops short right in front of him, and for a second Sokka thinks that Aang's about to throw caution to the wind and wrap his arms around him—Sokka waits with bated breathe to gauge Zuko's reaction—but as moments of silence bloat around them, it's getting less likely. Aang's still bouncing with energy, light on his feet and looking up at Zuko, and Sokka watches, tries to understand, and fails. 

Finally, Zuko flashes Aang a fond yet brief smile and promptly plucks his beanie off of his head. Zuko's short, too, but Aang really is the little guy in their group, hardly garnering a few inches on Toph, who's definitely their smallest. Which is why it's so easy for Zuko to extend his arm straight up, beanie twirling around his index finger, and watch Aang try in vain to get a hold of it. 

"Come on, you bully—give it back, I'm serious!" 

Sokka hears Suki laughs beside him, here's the amusement and giggles bouncing off of Aang's own words, and Zuko, who's smiling easy and free, eyes still set and sunken and yet seemingly okay—and Sokka feels the heaviness in his chest weighing him down evaporate, float up to the rafters of the Jasmine Dragon and dissipate, looks between the three of them, and just smiles, because things aren't perfect, and Sokka still doesn't know what the hell is going on with Zuko, but at least for right now, they've got him, and he's smiling and safe. And that's enough. 

Zuko eventually relents and lowers his arm, Aang immediately making a dive for it and nearly knocking over the tea cups on the table across from them. He shoots Zuko a sheepish smile, but he only rolls his eyes and moves to gather them. 

"I'll, uhm-I'll be right back," he says, before turning towards the back with an armful of empty cups. Aang plops back down next to Suki, and Sokka can see he's feeling back to himself already, and they set up to start a new game. Sokka casts one last look at them before following after Zuko.

He watches for a moment as Zuko, unaware of his presence, fiddles with the latch on the gate the separates the counter without dropping all the cups, before having mercy and popping open the latch and kicking the gate back, alleviating Zuko of a few of the cups. Zuko jumps as the gate hits the back wall, eyes darting that way before back to Sokka. He looks lost, all of a sudden, and Sokka frowns, before nodding his head towards the back for Zuko to lead the way. 

He does, quiet and withdrawn, and leads him past the counter and towards the back room that Sokka's only even been in once. The small and thin corridor-eseque kitchen area that they'd made baked in that one day is spotless, unused, as is the small lounge area tucked off into the corner. Zuko disregards both and heads to the large sink and sets the cups down as gently as possible. Sokka does the same. They still clatter. 

"I'm sorry," Zuko blurts out, turning and pushing his back up against the counter, bracing. Sokka feels an immediate response crawl it's way up his throat, a knee-jerk opposition on his lips, but Zuko beats him to it. "For—for not answering your texts, and for leaving last night. Sometimes I just sort of..disappear. And—and I haven't always had people around me that worry when I get like that. I wasn't thinking." 

The words he wanted to say die on Sokka's lips at the unexpected omission. The words ring around in his head, painful and numbing at the same time, and he doesn't even want to think of a Zuko alone and hurting, alone in his head with no one but himself working through shit—that's not how Sokka and his friends roll, and it won't be how Zuko does anymore is Sokka has anything to do with it. He doesn't want to think about it, but he does, because it cuts him deep and low and it hurts, but also makes him feel closer to Zuko than he ever has. 

Zuko's not alone. Sokka doesn't know what his life has been in the past, won't even try to placate and pretend he does, but now he's got them. He's got a whole group of ride or die friends that Sokka knows would do anything for anyone, especially one of their own. And that's what he is, whether he knows it or not. If all else fails, he has Sokka, in whatever capacity he needs him, whenever. 

"I get it," Sokka says instead of all of that, because if anything he knows that saying any of that is way too much, way too fast. Maybe one day they'll get there, but for now everything is too tentative and unknown, easily ruptured and thin. "Remember when we first hung out? I get it, Zuko. And you don't have to apologize. Not to me—or anyone, for that matter. I don't know what happened, and I'm not gonna ask. But we're all here for you, however you need us."

And maybe it's too much anyways, because Zuko stills, white-knuckle gripping the edge of the counter. His hair falls across his eyes and shields his expression from Sokka, which definitely doesn't help— he never meant to upset him, but will stand by what he said regardless.

"Why are you—" Zuko grits out, terse and clipped, and Sokka freezes, pushes down the spike of apprehension that bursts through him, racking his brain for what exactly angered him so profoundly—but Zuko throws his head back, hair flying back and spilling across his shoulders, and Sokka can see none of that same tension in his face. Zuko takes a few deep breaths, eyes screwed shut, before finally looking over at Sokka. His eyes are red and wet. Sad. "Thank you, Sokka," he finally says, voice earnest and warm, and Sokka can't help but wonder how he can change so fast like that—one moment sounding ready to chew him out and the next soft and gentle. He wishes he understood more about both sides, was privy to both the good and the bad alike. 

"For everything," he adds after a beat, eyes darting away and down to his shoes, and Sokka tries in vain to chase his gaze, to catch his eye again because Zuko's visibly upset. When Zuko looks up again, he's reigned it in and gives Sokka a small and inward smile. "I'm really glad that I met you."

"Yeah," Sokka says inadequately, mouth dry and brain short-circuiting. "Me too." He clears his throat. "Do you wanna go get some milkshakes?"

Zuko's eyes widen, but the small smile grows and quirks up one side of his mouth, and it's annoyingly distracting. He nods once, but it's enough for Sokka to grin and they head back out to Aang and Suki, who have moved on from Uno and are now engaged in a game of Rummy with Iroh. 

Zuko shoots Sokka an amused look at the scene before him and shakes his head, and a laugh bubbles up his chest; though whether it's from genuine amusement or manic relief he's not quite sure. 

"Hey!" Aang greets when he spots them, beaming once more and rising from his spot, game now abandoned. "Zuko, are you gonna come with us?" He asks, ever forward and unashamed, and Sokka watches that same fond look from earlier overtake his features, feels that same heat overtake him, too. 

"I can't turn down the prospect of milkshakes, Aang. Come on, use your brain."

Aang launches himself at Zuko, this time not holding back, and Sokka watches carefully, takes note of Zuko's initial panic before his eyes crinkle at the corners and he tries to fend him off, laughing and grousing at him all the same. It's achingly familiar to growing up with Katara when they were younger, and Sokka wonders if Zuko's aware Aang's adopted him as his big brother

Sokka turns his attention to Suki, used to Aang's usual antics and just rolling her eyes and shuffling the cards, then to Iroh. His eyes shine wet and heavy as Zuko's had minutes before, but the soft and content expression on his face gives Sokka more answers than any question he could have asked would have. 

Sokka takes a deep breath, savors this moment of momentary peace of bliss, and smiles. 

Aang stays attached to Zuko's hip on the way out to Suki's car, and Appa follows at their heels, winding his way in between them, unsure who he wants to focus his attention on. Sokka wordlessly gets into the passenger side, not making a scene of getting shot-gun, but with Aang getting to sit with Zuko in the back now, Sokka's not sure Aang's exactly too concerned with it any longer. Sokka can't blame him. 

"I can't believe you guys are making me drive to Marina," Suki grumbles when they get on the road, but Sokka quickly quiets her half-hearted complaints by hijacking the stereo and drowning out any conversation.

On the way to In n Out, Aang and Sokka rock out so hard that the car shakes at red lights, Aang continuously pestering Zuko to join them as Suki sings as loud as possible in order to make up for her lack of mobility. Sokka cranes himself around in his seat to mess with the boys in the back, pulling out his most boisterous voice and exaggerated expressions when One Week blasts from tinny speakers. 

The laugh it elicits from Zuko makes whatever fool he's made of himself entirely worth it. 

With the drive-thru conquered and the milkshakes acquired—three chocolate and one strawberry for a Suki, because she's weird—they coast around Marina for a while, skirting around heading back towards Venice and facing down their next move. 4-55 AC blowing harshly through the car and battling with the music blaring from the stereo, Sokka casts a glance back towards Zuko.

Zuko, with his head tipped back against the headrest and angled towards the open window, hair messy and blowing around his serene face, unbothered. The evening sun casts long and sharp shadows across his softened features, and he looks at peace. Far prettier than any 17 year old kid has any business being. 

Sokka wads up one of the In n Out napkins and chucks it at Zuko's sharp and milky collarbones, not even bothering to try and cover up his crime when Zuko levels him with a fiery glare. 

"Dick," he grumbles, flinging it right back at him and knocking him between the eyes with startling accuracy. Sokka gasps dramatically and clutches at his chest, flinging himself back forward in his seat but keeping his head lolled back towards Zuko, who stares out the window pointedly, teeth biting down on an amused smile. Sokka, satisfied with his small victory, turns back towards the front. 

"Sokka," Aang says suddenly, tapping at his shoulder repeatedly and making grabby hands for the stereo. "Sokka, Sokka, Sokka, turn it down real quick, I gotta say something." 

Sokka huffs and rolls his eyes but does as he's told, once more craning back and focusing on Aang, who's grinning widely. He puts on hand on Zuko's shoulder and the other on Sokka's, inhaled deeply, before loudly and proudly proclaiming: 

"I freaking love you guys!"

Laughter erupts in varying forms, all converging and harmonizing on the same wavelength of unadulterated and unpolluted joy.

~

From: Sokka (2:22 am)

let's do something tomorrow

tonight was really fun

i miss u 

To: Sokka (2:23 am)

It's been like 6 hours??

From: Sokka (2:23 am)

i said what i said

Zuko turns his phone over in his hands a few times, flicks the end of his lighter, and deliberates his response. 

Sokka may be the death of him, for the plain and simple fact that they've been friends for like three weeks, and Zuko's pretty sure that he has a big fat crush on him. Not pretty sure. Positive. He definitely has a big fat crush on him. 

'Hot ponytail guy' has turned into 'hot surfer guy' has molded into 'super hot ponytail surfer guy who asks about my interests and takes deliberate care in ensuring that I'm always comfortable,' which has turned into a problem. Because Sokka—and all of these friends he's somehow acquired in his short time here—are a whole other breed of people Zuko isn't sure how to deal with. People he used to believe were in short supply, people like his uncle, but is now realizing are maybe just as plentiful as the shit people—which is a mindset Zuko hasn't adopted since he was young and full of optimism, bright eyed and unblemished. 

Having a crush on Sokka is a bigger problem than he can even begin to conceptualize, however. Zuko's been in two relationships, and he doesn't have a great track record with those or any other kind of personal relationships. Besides, Sokka's out of his league by a landslide, shining and bright and destined for some sparkling life that Zuko feels too gloomy to even conceptualize. 

But then he texts shit like that, and Zuko catches him watching him, and taking notes with his eyes, tip-toeing around the subjects that Zuko's too chicken shit to confide in him, and takes special note of the things he says, remembers them, touches him and doesn't cause a fucking panic attack. He's smart, and funny, and kind, and hot, and Zuko just wants to be around him, if nothing else. Would take anything Sokka was willing to give him—which is exactly how he ran into this problem with his last relationship. 

But Sokka's not like that. Sokka's not like anyone. 

To: Sokka (2:25 am)

What did you have in mind?

From: Sokka (2:25 am)

idk. Denny's?

arcade?

zoo?

To: Sokka (2:26 am)

I've never been to the pier. 

Zuko sets his phone beside him on the roof, quelling down the panic in his chest. He likes Sokka, but it doesn't make him scared or want to avoid him as history has made it clear he is won't to do. He doesn't feel that perpetual urge to run and keep running just to survive, because so far being still and calm and settled has turned out pretty stellar. Besides the fear of losing him and everyone else, arching and broad, every time he's around Sokka it's freeing. 

Zuko's sick of harboring such doubt in his relationships he's waiting for the ice to break and drown him again. He wants to trust and live without fostering such a constant underlying fear beneath it. But between surfing and skating and just hanging out, Sokka makes him forget that he's supposed to be a hopeless worry-wart all of the time. Aang, and Sokka, Toph, Suki, Katara—it feels normal. Like he's finally leaving behind the prick he's been his whole life and breaking past layers and layers of that crusted on bullshit. He's scraped away at it for so long he's not sure he'll ever get it off for good, and god, does it hurt. But maybe it's okay?

From: Sokka (2:26 am)

no shit???

let's go 

i won't do the ferris wheel because blehhh but if ur serious i will pull out all the stops

To: Sokka (2:28 am)

Oh? What does all the stops entail?

From: Sokka (2:28 am)

giant teddy bear, baby >:)

also i can't sleep rn, wanna play our game for a bit?

Zuko rolls his eyes, glad no one's around to see the goofy smile on his lips. 

He calls Sokka, and is up for another few hours going back and forth with dumb, inconsequential questions. Regardless, he doesn't feel his fatigue when he wakes up for dawn patrol the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I succeeded in getting it up before midnight!! 
> 
> Short n sweet; a lil bit of fluff to kick off some fun stuff goin on in the next chapter. ;)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko cashes in on Sokka’s promise of a surfing lesson. Zuko doodles, and Sokka has a crisis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUGE disclaimer—this is not at all how tandem surfing works!! I’m taking a whole lotta of liberty with this, and it’s nowhere near as simple as it seems here.

Some things seem to slot themselves back into place organically, after that.

There's no detrimental fallout, no unanswered questions or misplaced animosity—the cruise around, Suki drops him back at home, and that's that. Sokka calls him, they make plans, and if anything things seem better than ever. 

Zuko wakes up the next morning, bright and early in a way that's becoming begrudgingly habitual, and meets up with everyone on the beach. Sokka sits up on the bank with him and Toph long after Suki, Aang and Katara hit the water, shoulder to shoulder and silent, but it's peaceful. The waves pull and crash rhythmically, lulling, and Sokka beside him is warm and still. A comforting pressure rather than a harmful one. When he inevitably heads out to join the others, Zuko leans back and lies back onto the warming sand, raising an arm over his eyes and letting his body heat under the rays. 

"What's going on between you two?" Toph asks after a few minutes of basking, and Zuko shrugs, digs his bare feet into the cool sand below the surface, feels the sea blunted shells dig and prod. 

"Nothing," he says hollowly, the words feeling flat and wrong. "I don't know," he amends, smiling as he looks out at the water and Aang and Sokka retrieve their boards; watches as Aang musters a huge bout of water with the end of his board and flings it at an already drenched Sokka. 

"The children have hijacked our night out," Sokka says to him when they get to the Jasmine Dragon, still slightly exasperated and damp, sand streaking his shoulders under the straps of his tank top and eyes red from saltwater. "Katara caught wind of our plans for the pier and now wants to make it a group outing. Is that okay?"

Zuko doesn't bat an eye as Sokka follows him behind the counter to grab the group some grub and tea. Iroh greets them pleasantly, and he's the only one who would even really care, so it doesn't matter. He starts in on making a pot of Jasmine as Sokka pulls himself up onto the counter beside him. 

"Yeah, that's cool," he says, but when he looks over Sokka's frowning. "..Right?" He tacks on, and Sokka heaves a heavy sigh. Zuko stops steeping tea and turns his attention onto him. 

"Yeah," he says after a beat, shaking his head and focusing back on Zuko, forcing a smile on his face. It looks so real it's almost convincing. "Yeah, definitely. It's more fun after dark though, so I've got a proposition for you."

"Oh?" Zuko turns back to his tea, not entirely convinced by Sokka's answer but willing to let it slide for now. He'll ask about it later. "Do tell."

"Surfing. Tonight, down the coast a bit, where we're alone. Before we all meet up?"

Zuko falters at the thought, feels a quiver in his hand as he turns up the heat in the pot. Thinks of a rushing water and his horrible, horrible balance—at how long getting even the basics of skating back took after his accident, and feels his heart drop. Sokka notices, and a crease develops in his brow as he looks Zuko up and down. 

"Hey, if you really don't want to—"

"I made a promise," he cuts in with a grin he hopes is more convincing than the one Sokka had shot him moments before. "And so did you," he says, and knocks Sokka's dangling leg lightly with his shoulder, turning back to pour out the tea. 

"And I was serious. We'll be safe, okay?" And all Zuko can do is nod, despite the feeling of terror thrumming through his veins at the thought of going out and doing the shit that he watches them do day by day. He thinks of his balance, and months struggle to be able to even pull off daily procedures on bad days. His death wobble, he recalls in a familiar snide and cruel voice. Watching surfing is different than executing it, and that is alone to make him nervous, taking away all outside factors from the equation. 

He trusts Sokka, but to this extent? 

~

Sokka picks Zuko up in a big blue vanagon, paint job peeling at the sides and engine loud and sputtering outside the Jasmine Dragon. But it runs, his boards fit in the back, and the stereo works, which is all that Sokka seems to think matters in terms of its function when Zuko's apprehensive about getting in. 

"I can see the convenience, I guess. At least there's room for everyone back there," Zuko says as he tosses his messenger bag back with the boards, which dissipates whatever hesitance is between them due to Zuko's nerves pervading the vibe. He doesn't want to ruin tonight, is excited to hang out with his—with his friends and his crush who also happens to be his best friend—but he's not excited about whatever a surfing lesson entails. 

Sokka drives out of town for a bit, maybe twenty minutes down the coast until the commercial area has long since dissipated and it's mostly loose and sparse residential. Sokka tells Zuko about Appa destroying his grandma's favorite scarf today, and then he screams along to Mr. Brightside down the PCH, loud and out of tune but radiant regardless. Zuko in turn tells him about rude customers and other fantastical whims of working customer service, and it's easy and light between them until Sokka pulls off onto a worn piece of pavement overwhelmed with sand. 

Zuko feels something in his stomach jolt, and he snags Sokka's arm just as he's getting out of the car. 

"Wait," he says, and Sokka does, turns so that he's fully back in the car and facing Zuko, door still open and providing more of a breeze than just having the windows down did. It doesn't feel as suffocating to him as Zuko thinks maybe it should. "I—I have to tell you something."

"Are you okay?" Is Sokka's immediate response, and fuck, if Zuko doesn't want to cry. He's lucky to have so many kind people surrounding him, he really is, but it's so god damn overwhelming. It's hard enough reciting his shit back to someone literally paid to hear it—but someone so caring, and genuine? Someone with no obligation? Nearly too much. 

"Yeah, I just—my scar, uhm. It's completely fucked my whole left side. I have inner ear issues, balance problems and stuff, so I just, uhm. Yeah. I'm scared?"

~

"Oh, shit." 

Sokka feels himself pale, feels his heart drop down into his stomach. He doesn't know what the fuck to say to that. 

"Zuko, I'm so sorry," he finally manages, and Zuko immediately tenses, curling away from Sokka and shaking his head. "Seriously, let's just go get pancakes or something, this is so not something I'm about to make you do—"

"I want to," he interrupts, voice small and guarded in the same way it was that first day on the beach. "And I trust you, and I know this is important to you, so. Yeah. I just thought you should know?"

"Thank you for telling me," he says, even though the words sound warped and wrong coming out of his mouth. He wants to say something else, anything, but he doesn't know what. Doesn't want to word vomit and say the wrong thing in the process of getting to the right thing. Zuko doesn't react, doesn't do anything but stare down at his hands, that huge mottled scar really snagging Sokka's attention for the first time, and Sokka is so, so afraid of losing the Zuko he's gained these past few weeks that he'll do anything to hold onto those last bits of openness. "Hey, have you ever heard of tandem surfing?"

"Tandem?" 

Sokka grabs his phone from the center console and quickly pulls up a Google image search of the sport. When he passes his phone to Zuko, his eyebrow shoots up to his hairline. Sokka laughs, feels some of the anxiety in his chest dissipate a bit. 

"Uhm, yeah, I don't think I'm that flexible—"

And then they're both laughing, and Sokka's pretty sure it's more just so that it's not silent and tense between them, maybe a little too manic to be genuine, but still. Zuko's smiling in the eye crinkle kind of way, and maybe all hope isn't lost. 

"We can work up to it. But you weigh basically nothing, so I'm pretty sure we could get you on my board with me if I adjust my center of balance. At least until you're comfortable enough to try it on your own. It'll get you used to being on the water for tonight. and then next time I'll teach you how to practice riding waves lying down."

"Really?" Zuko doesn't look convinced, but he also seems to be considering it, which Sokka takes as a win. Besides, if they're on the same board, Sokka can balance Zuko a bit, can fall with him if it happens, keep tabs on him and keep him safe. It sounds like a solid way of going about things. 

"Why not? If we go down we go down together, right? I've never done it so who knows how it'll really go, but I won't let anything happen to you," he says, not disclosing the fact that he would honest to god lay his ass out on the line to keep Zuko from feeling even slight discomfort. He should harbor no fear about getting harmed in the surf. 

"Okay. Let's do it."

Zuko's already in surprisingly appropriate attire—loose orange board shorts with another band shirt from his endless repertoire—and Sokka's pretty much always dressed like he's ready to jump into the ocean at any point, so they slide out of the car and Sokka pops open his trunk. He passes a spare wetsuit he's got stashed away in in the back and passes it to Zuko. He pulls off his shirt and tugs on his own. He grabs a singular 9 foot board from the back, hauls the hefty bastard up under his arm, and turns to Zuko. 

Zuko, with his face tipped up, angled towards the sun and glowing. He's pulled his hair back into a loose pony Sokka's sure if bound to fall out the second they crash, but for now he relishes in the full view he gets of the other boy without hair obstructing him. Teenagers shouldn't be allowed to look like that. 

"Hey," he says, coming up on his right and catching his attention, drawing it away from the warmth the sun bathes them in. "I may have to touch you when we get out there. Balance and stuff, y'know and I just—I don't want to make you uncomfortable." He feels the blush rising on his cheeks before the words are even out, because yeah, more than anything does he want to have his hands against Zuko's back and sides steadying him out there, will take whatever he can get, but he's not about to just do that. No way. 

"It's okay," Zuko responds after a beat, and when he looks over at Sokka, smile and eyes soft, Sokka really believes him. His eyes are especially golden with the sun picking out the striking amber bits and making them shine. "Thanks for the heads up." Something goes unsaid there, but Sokka doesn't push it. 

Sokka claps him on the shoulder, takes note of the fact that he doesn't flinch, and hopes that it isn't a calculated reaction. 

"Okay, so we're gonna paddle out there together; you in front, me in back. We're probably gonna skip a few waves just for a bit, and if you feel weird or disoriented at any point you tell me, alright?" Sokka explains as they head towards the water, and Zuko nods, short and clipped, but his features are hard set and determined, and it's fucking hot. Zuko's likely gonna be the death of him, but what a way to go. 

"Sounds good. Sure I'm not gonna sink us?" Sokka slaps the under side of his board heftily and grins. 

"Big ass board. Skinny ass boy. I think it'll be alright." 

So they paddle out. It's weird having so much extra weight on the board, but he thinks he plays it off to Zuko pretty well. They're a lot closer than they've ever been, even with Sokka further down towards the tail of the board so Zuko can hoist himself up to sit on the middle. Sokka's not entirely sure how this is going to work, but with the both of them doing what they can to break past the white water it's going relatively okay so far. 

"When I tell you to, think you can pop up to the way you've seen us do when we're surfing in the morning?"

"I—I can try."

Sokka's known the ins and outs of surfing so long it's kind of exhilarating not knowing how it's gonna go. 

"You ready?" He asks as he watches a nice gentle break across the horizon. He hears Zuko call back his affirmation, and makes the move to pop up at nearly the exact same time Zuko does. Solid start. 

Rocky execution. Sokka's not used to the tip of his board towards the center, his weight towards the back causing the nose to pop up and nearly keel them backward. Zuko's low and nearly still crouched but—when Sokka pushes forward it kind of works? 

Not for long. 

"Jump!"

They're still far enough out in the water to make a smooth dive into the water without fear of hitting the sea-floor, and Sokka's pretty sure he heard Zuko laugh as they dove in opposite directions so it can't be so bad. 

"Dude! We almost had it!" Sokka exclaims the second Zuko emerges up from the water, ponytail somehow still hanging loose over his shoulder yet now drenched. He's smiling wide, and Sokka distantly hopes he feels that same adrenaline rush that he's riding right now. 

"Let's try it again."

They do. Twice. Both times it goes sour, but it's getting closer, and Zuko's finding his footing, feeling less hesitant and shaky on his feet, which in turn makes the board more steady. Sokka realizes midway through the second attempt that he's using the same moves he had that night skating to balance himself, which is likely a contributing factor to their minor successes. They've got the position mostly down, now it's all in execution. 

The fourth go around the wave is perfect, and they are damn near perfect on their position and footing. Zuko's so close, mere inches from being pressed up against Sokka's chest, and he should not be focusing on this right now. 

Sokka's so surprised that they've got it he nearly lets them slip up, relaxing like he would on a normal ride and causing another shift, nose dive this time. Spur of the moment, Sokka fumbles forward and catches Zuko around his ribs, hands connecting with the soaked fabric of his t-shirt and grasping at the warm skin underneath. It makes him jump, but gets them centered again, and if Sokka just doesn't let go—well it's for balance sake. Zuko doesn't make any move to pull away. 

They don't ride it as far out as Sokka normally would and nowhere near as smoothly, but it's close enough, and Sokka feels so happy he could explode. They both take the gentle jump off a few yards from the sand and the second they've both made it to solid ground Sokka starts cheering, because his heart is fucking soaring. 

"We did it! Zuko, Zuko, Zuko—you surfed! That was so cool!" 

Zuko looks slightly flustered, maybe a little shaky on his legs, but he’s staring back at the water with a look of disbelief, eyes as wide as the smile on his face, and Sokka wants to kiss him so badly, suddenly and without warning. 

"That was crazy," he says, shaking his head before tearing his eyes from the surf to look at Sokka. Somehow, his smile loosens. "Did we really just do that?"

Sokka tips his head back and laughs at the sun, the happy feeling in his heart expansive and glorious, and when Zuko laughs, too, pieces of a puzzle he didn't know needed solving start snapping together one by one, side by side.

But the sky opens up and slams down on them without warning, and their laughs meld into affronted shouts drowned out by the downpour. 

It's tough with a giant ass surfboard shoved up under his arm, but with Zuko assisting on the tail end and getting them up the beach as fast as possible they make it through the tepid rain faster than Sokka ever would've managed on his own. He hears Zuko laughing and throws a glare in that direction as they part ways to hop into the car. They strip of drenched and sticky wetsuits, shoving them in the back following the board haphazardly. 

Zuko's still puffing out small breathy laughs as they take a moment to regain themselves in the car, and when Sokka looks over at him, his hair's loose and drenched, falling over his face and causing little droplets to seep into his already soaked shirt and pants. His shoulders shake slightly with the laughter. 

"Where the fuck did that come from?" Zuko finally gasps, letting his head fall back onto the rest and pushing the wet strands out of his face. He mostly succeeds, only a few straw strands still curling around his temples and wrapping around his neck. Sokka's mouth feels so dry he can't speak. 

Zuko slides his gaze his way after Sokka uncharacteristically doesn't respond immediately, blessed smile still toying on his lips until his eyes lock with Sokka's. He pales, and Sokka feels like he comes back into his body a bit. 

"Your..your hair," he whispers between them, nearly lost to the raindrops smacking down onto the metal roof. Sokka takes note of his lack of wolf tail, of the thin long strands he catches in his peripherals that he hadn't registered until now. Zuko's eyes follow the lines of his hair, and Sokka feels so scrutinized being looked at so heavily by someone that looks like that that it's painful. "I like it down," he finally says, and Sokka huffs a laugh as Zuko's eyes quit tracing his features and land back on his eyes. Sokka laughs it off awkwardly, looking away and grabbing a hair tie from around his gearstick and pulling it back again. 

"Thanks, man. It annoys me most of the time, so I keep it pulled back." 

A tense moment passes between them, and Sokka knows it's likely due to him making it weird, because Zuko is usually the awkward one and it works out mostly well for them, so he just—doesn’t know what to do. Zuko keeps looking, still and seemingly tranced our. Without warning, he reaches back and grabs the bag he'd tossed when he first got in the car and digs through it for a minute. Sokka takes the time to start the car, keeping an eye on him. 

"Figure we probably shouldn't drive in rain like this," he murmurs as he keeps searching, and Sokka wants to know exactly how much shit Zuko has stuffed in there to be rustling so much and what exactly he's looking for that's evading him so successfully. He makes a little triumphant noise, conjuring a—black pen? "It won't look very good," Zuko looks up at Sokka and twirls the pen in his fingers, flashing him a small smile, "but I could give you some quick ink?"

"Uhm, please?" Sokka instantly scoots his seat back and extends his arm out to lie between them on the center console wrist up, and watches as Zuko carefully uncaps the ink marker and looks down at Sokka's arm pensively. In the background noise of the rain, Sokka's phone reconnects to his car's Bluetooth and starts droning Weezer around them. 

"Anything?" Zuko says after a beat, looking up at Sokka through his lashes in a way that is definitely unintentional but drives him wild all the same. He watches as Zuko slips the hair tie that somehow miraculously wasn't lost to the waves up into the top layer of his wet hair and leaves the longer under parts of it to splay across his shoulders. He swallows hard, wishes Zuko would just start drawing so he can pine in peace, and nods. 

"Go crazy." And so he does. 

Sokka watches as he draws the sharp lines of a triangle, somehow straight and dark despite the flimsy and thick pen he's working with. Sokka tilts his head back, basks in the gentle pressure of Zuko's free hand steadying his wrist, nimble fingers wrapping right above his pulse and keeping him grounded. The feeling of the pen gliding across his arm makes waves of relief and comfort flood through his whole body sudden and fast, like being drug under riptides, slammed again and again without warning. He thinks of Gran-Gran's fingers carding through his hair softly, of the last kiss he shared with someone insignificant months ago, of Katara rubbing at his temples gently on days he's out of commission with migraines from hell, of Yue gently braiding his hair years ago. His father clapping him on the shoulder and hugging him tight before leaving. His mom, faceless and hollow voiced now, pulling him against her chest and running her hands up and down his spine. 

Something about the soft touch opens up the floodgates, makes him want to cry because he misses being touched so badly, and how sad is it that he hasn't even realized until he's struck down by something as simple as this? Seemingly casual, yet feeling so much more wordlessly deep-seeded than the typical exchanges between Aang or even his sister. He isn't sure how to ask for this anymore, worries that maybe it's too late, but knows he never wants Zuko to stop. 

"Is—Is this weird?"

Sokka's snaps back into the present, peels his eyes open and relishes in that lingering tingle that travels from his arm through his spine and winds around his ribs, blooms in his chest. He misses Zuko's gentle touch like a phantom limb, and selfishly wishes he could run his fingers through Zuko's hair, trace the lines of his scar with his fingers, anything to bring Zuko the same amount of comfort that this simple touch is bringing him. 

"No," is all he says, but his voice sounds so strangled and distant just on that one syllable that Zuko must pick up on it too, wordlessly going back to his artwork. Sokka pays attention to Zuko's touch in particular, in the warmth of his hands and the soft sounds of his breathing battling against the music and rain. The smell of saltwater, mixed with coffee and cologne, and even the loose strand of soft hair that tickles at the inside of Sokka's elbow when Zuko leans forward into his space to get a better angle at whatever it is he's drawing. He files it away for those distant memories of distinct touch he'll long for when he's alone, wants to remember everything about this moment crystal clear so that he doesn't forget it. For some reason, it feels vastly important.

Zuko draws him a beautiful assortment of flowers and vines woven around an emblazoned dagger, but unsurprisingly the beauty that Sokka can't take his eyes off of is the boy drawing it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They are *soft*
> 
> I actually kinda like this chapter?? I hope all of you do too and I’m not just delusional oops
> 
> As I said in the note above, tandem surfing is absolutely bonkers and nowhere near as simple and easy as I make it seem, but if it interests you I would definitely look up some of the kind of things those beasts can do on a surfboard!! Like couples yoga, but on like a 2 ft space and while maintaining typical surf procedure. Absolutely nuts.
> 
> I have a playlist of music that I vibe to while writing this and of songs I associate with this story—would anybody be interested in listening if I posted it with the next update? I may do it anyways even if no one is lmao
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Love you guys :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka comes face to face with a part of Zuko he's never disclosed to anyone before. The group amends their plans for the night, and Sokka and Zuko find themselves conspicuously late.

The pier turns into movie and pizza night pretty soon after it becomes clear the rain's going to goad them on intermittently all night. Zuko's mostly just kind of excited to hang out with everyone, regardless of the setting, and Sokka seems excited that he's regained the 'privilege' as he says to pop Zuko's pier cherry. Zuko wrinkles his nose at this, but a blush rises on his cheeks regardless.

Zuko winds up drawing a lot longer on Sokka than he'd intended, getting lost in the lines and shapes of the florally emblazoned dagger, similar characters running down its blade that run right down his own arm. Sokka doesn't mind—at least he doesn't vocalize any discomfort. He's more relaxed and calm than Zuko's ever seen him, still and slumped, so maybe he even likes it? Wishful thinking, but the drawing itself is kind of shoddy and flat considering his lack of range with the kind of medium he's working with. It's fine. Sokka keeps sneaking glances at it as he's driving, but it's fine.

Sokka's wet hair is also heavy, meaning that strands of it are falling out of his hastily done pony tail, and Sokka seems completely unaware. This is not fine.

Zuko hijacks the music just for something to do to distract him from this fact, and the rest of the ride to the local pizza shop that Sokka swears by is filled with boisterous singing—mostly done by Sokka—and so much thrashing the van teeters as they ride back towards town.

"Hey, can you stop by the shop on the way back? I wanna pick up some fresh clothes for tonight."

"Why don't I just swing by your place?"

Zuko pauses his text to Suki, looks up slowly and scrutinizing, and bites back a smile, tone falsely serious.

"Yeah. The Jasmine Dragon."

"..Huh?"

"Sokka, our apartment is over the shop. I literally told you Iroh bought the building like, the first time we hung out," he says slowly as Sokka's brows furrow further, and he shakes his head, throwing a glance Zuko's way before he looks back out at the road.

"You didn't tell me that you lived in the apartment! I thought that you lived outside of town or something—wait, so that's why you're there so much?"

Zuko nods, humming his affirmation and not mentioning the fact that it's in part due to the convenience, in part due to feeling like he should do whatever he can to make up for the life changes his uncle's had to make to accommodate taking custody of a teenager sacked with out the ass hospital bills, despite how much said teenager despises morning shift. He's getting used to it, though.

Sokka mumbles to himself about the new information, and Zuko can only shake his head and smile. He's quite possibly the dumbest smart person Zuko's ever met, and it's equal parts endearing and amusing.

He guides Sokka down the alley that heads towards the back of their apartment, gesturing to the fading brick and the fire escape that's right outside his bedroom window and telling him that that's it. The building looks pretty much the exact same as it does around the front minus the shop facade on the lower level and with the addition of the fire escape, but Sokka still looks shocked. He parks the van right by the garage door where his Uncle's personal and the business vehicle are and gets out, still staring up at the building still looking surprised.

"C'mon," Zuko says when it becomes clear Sokka's going to continue to just stare at the building. He goes towards the garage area, entering the passcode and pushing the door up and open. Sokka follows after him, quiet and taking the garage in. Zuko's very aware of his tosser projects lying around everywhere all of a sudden, and vows to never let Sokka see the rooftop where the rest are.

His uncle, unsurprisingly, isn't in the apartment when they enter, and it's so oddly quiet, no real noise besides the soft trickle of the fish tank in the living room and the hum of the A/C.

"Through that door," Zuko gestures towards the kitchen, "there's a little middle room in between the apartment and the shop," he explains, and Sokka nods, following after Zuko as he starts heading up the spiral steps towards the second level. "Second floor—Uncle's room, bathroom, and guest room," he continues, gesturing to each and leaving out the fact that the guest room is technically designated for his sisters, feeling a slight burst of panic curl in the pit of his stomach at the brief though of either of them. He pushes past it and onward, up the narrow, rickety steps to the final floor.

"My floor," he gestures grandly, waving his hands and smiling over at Sokka, who rolls his eyes and shakes his head fondly. They stand on the landing for a beat, before Zuko gestures between the three doors. "My bathroom. Uncle's office, but he never uses it so it's mostly storage." Zuko turns away from Sokka and throws his body weight against the third door, unsticking it from it position in the frame and nearly tumbling forward into his room as he always does. "My room," he tacks on, even though he doesn't need to.

He immediately busies himself at his dresser, back to Sokka so he doesn't have to take in Sokka's expression at all of his stuff. Toph's been over plenty of times, but besides knowing the general layout so that she can get around has not a clue what it really looks like, and besides her he doesn't have people up here. Aang's the only other one that's ever even been over, and he didn't even leave the first floor. So Sokka's the first, actually.

His room is always clean, but that doesn't mean he doesn't take comfort in clutter. Doesn't mean he doesn't stick things on his walls like a madman, orderly and with rhythm and yet in multitudes. A noise rings out from the side of the room as Zuko pulls a shirt from the makeshift clothes rack he'd thrown together with PVC pipe when they'd first bought the place in the Spring. Zuko turns and casts the small Casio in the corner a wistful look, turns his gaze upward to where Sokka's finger still rests on one of the keys.

"You play?" Sokka says on a breath, eyes leaving the keys as he looks over at Zuko, who smiles sheepishly.

"I used to a lot. Not as much as I should anymore, though."

"Should?"

"Chops are rusty," he says, shaking out his hands for emphasis, and Sokka merely furrows his brow, looks back over at the piano with disdain now written all over his face. Zuko's not sure what he did wrong, is about to ask, before Sokka brightens again and passes Zuko on his way towards the window closest to the fire escape.

"Shit, man! Mind if I look?" Zuko watches as Sokka carefully runs his fingers along the spines of his record collection, eyes crinkling as he does so, and those strands of hair are still driving Zuko nuts, and yeah, there's no possible way he would—could, honestly—ever say no. Instead, Zuko turns to grab a random pair of jeans out of his dresser and nods.

"Of course. I'm gonna go change, cool?" He jabs a thumb back towards the bathroom and Sokka nods, already having moved on to craning forward and tracing the titles with his index finger. Zuko wonders if he knows he's consciously doing it, and turns towards the bathroom before he considers it too much and drives himself crazy.

He quickly switches out of his still slightly damp clothes, much more comfortable in a hoodie and jeans than he was before despite the heat he's bound to face in the intermittent periods they're going to be outside before settling in for movies. He forces himself to look in the mirror, pointedly ignores the way he involuntarily flinches at the sight and instead busies himself with running a comb through his tangled wet hair and allowing it to dry just completely down. It's grown out a bit, no longer shaggy and gaining more weight to it, brushing his shoulders and curling slightly. He didn't even realize he had somewhat curly hair, honestly. It's never grown out like this.

It sort of looks like his mom's.

When he heads back into his room, Sokka's no longer crouched down in front of his bookshelf of records, is running his hands across them delicately no more, and is instead staring up at the massive piece of paper pinned to the wall above it. The checklist of all the records his father had destroyed during Zuko's last days on the estate, the ones he's gained back ticked off with the black sharpie hanging by a bit of yarn to the side. There aren't very many.

"This is an..odd assortment?" Sokka says once he sees Zuko collapse down onto his bed next to where Sokka is. Zuko tugs on his hoodie strings, looks down at the old Hendrix record Sokka had been examining, and nods.

"A lot of my records got destroyed before I moved here. I'm trying to get them back," he explains, and when Sokka looks over at him, eyes narrowed and features drawn, Zuko can tell that Sokka knows there's more to the story Zuko isn't disclosing. He gets that feeling a lot, and wishes he had the stomach to give Sokka scraps of the real story so he wouldn't feel so bad about skidding around who he is all the time.

"I'm sorry," Sokka says like he understands how much they mean to Zuko, and maybe he does. He moves to sit next to Zuko on the bed, their thighs mere inches apart, and Zuko feels like there's more to be said. Something they're dancing around that he can't pin, and it's saddening. He wishes he had the right words, anything to give Sokka some sort of semblance of the answers he deserves that cost Zuko a sturdy sense of resolve that he just doesn't have. "Can we listen to a side of it? Before we go?"

Zuko nods blearily, memories of cracked records strewn across a marble foyer flashing through his mind, the smell of burning canvases and paint in a giant stone fireplace. He shivers into his hoodie and lies on his side, back pressed against the wall his bed is and chin tucked under the neckline.

He watches as Sokka very carefully maneuvers his way around his record player, movements familiar and experienced, hands normally so fast moving and energetic now soft and purposeful. He jacks the volume dial up a bit before turning back towards Zuko and situating himself parallel to Zuko, a few inches tactfully between them, chest to the ceiling. Zuko can't help the ways his eyes watch Sokka, trace every careful move. Careful, careful, careful. Sokka is careful, and Zuko feels guilty that he has to be.

"My dad used to collect records. He had this big collection when he was a teenager that he'd been building for years, but he has some pretty valuable stuff so he sold them off when he was, like, 20 to buy my mom's engagement ring." Zuko stares as Sokka's fingers come up to tug on the puka resting across his neck, watches them wind around the small pearlescent shells. Wonders blearily if Sokka is equally apprehensive to disclose this kind of thing to Zuko as he is—double crosses and wonders if that's the case why he is anyway. "She said yes, but was ticked he'd given them all away like that."

Sokka shifts his body so that he's facing Zuko, mirroring him near perfectly, and Zuko notes acutely how he won't meet his eyes.

"That was her wedding gift. She got a list from the shop he'd sold them off to and went about accumulating all of them," his eyes flick back to Zuko's own list on the wall. "And Gran-Gran says that dad wept," Sokka let's out a wet laugh, and Zuko takes note of the same wetness around his eyes, and feels sadness, deep and gutting, curdle in his gut. "My dad has them up in the attic so I don't see them anymore, but when I was a kid he played them all the time."

"That's really beautiful," Zuko breathes, and Sokka's moist eyes finally meet his and a small smile fills the space between them. "That she knew him well enough to understand how much it would mean to him."

"They really loved each other, man," Sokka says after a beat, and the wording fills in a lot of the gaps in Zuko's understanding of the situation, and he doesn't want to ask, but he's not even sure he has to.

"Hey," he says, reaching down into the space between them and, with a steadying breath, taking Sokka's hand in his own. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and it feels inadequate, but is probably better than just bluntly asking what happened. He wants to, of course, but thinks that he knows from experience if Sokka's comfortable with him knowing he'll come to him. Due time. Gradually. "Do you..do you remember what any of the significant albums were?"

Sokka doesn't cry. The moisture in his eyes subsides as he speaks in low and soft tones, reciting some off the top of his head. Sokka's catches his hand when Zuko goes to adjust and move away, gives him enough breathing room to escape if need be but gently, maybe even subconsciously, runs his fingers across the back of Zuko's hand. It feels good, in ways that Zuko doesn't even know how to fathom, but he feels himself being lulled into a state of such relaxation it teeters too close to absoluete vulnerability.

Sokka has a lot of power over him here. Zuko somehow whole heartedly knows he won't abuse it. The most surprising part of that is just how unsurprised he really is.

~

Sokka knows they have plans.

He knows he's supposed to be back at his house with pizza and Zuko in tow in like an hour. He knows this.

He also knows that Zuko has never looked more serene than he does now, his whole body curled towards Sokka and his limp hand still resting in Sokka's. He's not sure if he's fully asleep, not sure if he himself is fully awake; but he's relaxed, all tension gone from his features, hair drying and soft around his face and across the pillow under his head. He looks younger, even with his damaged side the one more visible to Sokka. Unburdened.

Peaceful is a good look for him, one Sokka thinks is maybe his favorite (foreseeable news flash: it's not, they're all his favorite—Zuko is his favorite).

The record's spinning idly behind them, waiting to be turned, and Sokka feels himself melt away into the quiet and languid warmth of the room, drifts off with Zuko in his sights and returning the moment he slips out of consciousness.

The phone is ringing. The phone is ringing loud, far too soon, and right in Sokka's ear. Jesus Christ.

It's a rude awakening for such a peaceful rest, what with how he tumbles backwards off the bed and splays out onto Zuko's floor, but when he looks up and looks at the perpetrator, Zuko with a smug smile on his face, Sokka's phone in his hand and poised to fit the crime, Sokka just can't be mad.

"You're a dick," Sokka says, narrows his eyes and flattens his lips, but Zuko just tosses him his phone and rises from his bed almost pointedly smoothly. He looks down at his phone, sees that he's missing a few notifications from his friends, and a lot from Katara, who is very hungry and very upset with a lack of pizza in her life. Sokka figures Zuko and him aren't as much of a necessity.

He shoots a quick text to the groupchat saying that they got 'held up', and when he looks over at Zuko, he's got his phone tucked up under his ear, sorting out their pizza situation seamlessly. Sokka checks his phone again. They'd only been conked out for about 20 minutes, but god, was it glorious.

Besides Zuko's abrupt awakening. But still, they do have plans.

"Let's go," Zuko says as he tucks his phone into his hoodie pocket and slips on a pair of Vans. "It's still there, but the lady was very adamant that it wouldn't be much longer if we delay her any further." Accompanied by a sarcastic eye roll but a slight smile, Sokka shakes his head and laughs before heading towards the door. Zuko doesn't move.

"Uhm," Sokka says eloquently, looking between the door and Zuko, who now looks very amused. He turns his back on Sokka, heads over to the large window near the foot of his bed, and cracks it open. The fire escape. "Fuck, man," he mutters as they both climb out and start heading down the iron wrought steps. He can't help the wry laugh that escapes him as he follows. "Dude, it'd be so easy to sneak out. Your uncle must really trust you—my family would never."

"I don't really try to pull anything. I've had my fill of teen rebellion," Zuko says offhandedly, and that raises so many questions Sokka could scream. He's sensing a reoccurring pattern, here. "I don't have a reason to sneak out, anyways. Anytime I leave the house he's thrilled."

"Can't relate," Sokka huffs as the finally make it down to ground level where the van is. They both slide in. "Can't even begin to tell you how many mornings I've spent trying to convince Gran-Gran that I was coming back from surfing and not a party. Nowadays I usually really am surfing, but she still worries a lot, y'know."

"I think uncle is more worried about me missing out and not doing anything rather than doing too much. I was—kinda awful, my first two years of high school. Uncle wasn't around me too much then, but me and my sister acted out a lot. It had its consequences, and I learned. He's been really happy I've been hanging out with you guys, actually." Zuko's voice has tapered off slightly, small and almost shy, and Sokka tries not to say something cheesy about how happy he is that Zuko's been hanging out with them, too. With him.

"I'm trying really hard to picture party boy Zuko and failing miserably," Sokka says instead, trying to lighten the mood slightly. There's much more to that story, as there is with everything with Zuko, and Sokka isn't ready to push that yet. One thing sticks in his head though. "Wait, you have a sister?"

"..Two. Both younger. We don't live together, and I only really see one of them," Zuko says after a moment of hesitation, words deliberate and clipped. Sokka's not sure why all of a sudden Zuko's okay with disclosing some of this information with him, but he's not complaining. That doesn't mean he knows what the hell to do.

"Will you tell me about them?" It's a risk, sure, but Zuko doesn't shut him out immediately, doesn't go quiet and crane away from him. Sokka will not push it, but on the off chance that maybe he wants to talk about it or needs to and hasn't been able to is part of the reason he so adamantly doesn't, Sokka's there.

There's no 'them' in the discussion. Zuko speaks exclusively of his half sister Kiyi, who is 4 and lives in Santa Barbara. Zuko's voice harbors an untapped fondness when he speaks about her, but his gaze stays trained out the window and his face is back to holding that distantly harrowing quality to it that was void not even an hour ago.

Somewhere around the point where Zuko starts tapping into that closed off and apprehensive zone, Sokka gently starts offering his own tales of growing up as an older brother to Katara, and things loosen back up between them pretty quickly. It's the closest Sokka's got to cracking the mystery that is Zuko's family, his past and all that that entails, and it feels wildly important. As does the fact that neither of them speak a word of their parents throughout their stories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I really just wanna write Zuko and Sokka listening to Hendrix records and making out languidly for 3k words? Of course. Should I have? Probably. Did I?? Yikes. Unrelated, but uhhh I love the prospect of Kiyi and Zuko's relationship, so I'm incorporating it in this, albeit mostly just to have Zuko and Sokka interacting with a mini Zuko further on down the line. Look forward to that, I suppose. 
> 
> As promised, I present you with the official High Tide playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3MOxTnLfkCZwFKrSbfgY6h?si=xBzhnnVXSnmBvUOzR-MH0g  
> The playlist is a whole ass mess, but I'll leave you guys to discern for yourselves which tracks were intended for Zuko, which for Sokka, and which for both ;) Fair warning: this thing is always being updated and changed as I keep writing, so heads up for inconsistency there.
> 
> Also! I'm not sure how I managed to forget to link these forever ago when I was given access to them but user [Cannes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cannes/pseuds/Cannes) made two wonderful playlists for Sokka and Zuko that are just absolutely stellar and I would recommend checking those out as well!  
> Sokka's: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/78TZ0u1k7L3GvFNlpRs7Lm?si=F15Jdu-fSNKPMwtycMNgZw  
> Zuko's: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5OHRcpTGwmJ3z4FkNfP6n6?si=OuE_kBANQFy7yAtpo6mL1Q
> 
> One last thing: you guys are incredible. Seriously, what with this being my first thing I have EVER posted, I never expected like, even 50 people to read this and enjoy it, and now this is nearing 2000 hits? Bonkers. Every single comment I cherish, and the thought of how many people this has resonated with was never fathomable to me, but I am so, so glad that it's all panned out this way. Love you guys, thanks for your support, and enjoy a lil short n sweet chapter. :) <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of insight into how Zuko started to become the person he is today—the bad, and some of the good, too.
> 
> Everyone settles in for movie night, and Zuko is overwhelmed with a wave of contentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abuse is alluded to in this chapter! Proceed with caution.
> 
> Chapter 10. Alternatively titled: Chapter 1 of Zuko’s backstory

Zuko first runs away when he's 11.

He wanders the streets of Beverly Hills with unshed tears blurring his vision and a bruise blooming across his forearm, terrified of the unknown yet entirely more afraid of his father. He's fresh off of his first week at a new school, Azula is all the way across the country, and his mom is gone. He's alone. 

His ankle feels twisted and hurts with every step he takes further away from the mansion from the tumble he'd taken on his way down the side of the house, but it loses out to the thrumming pain in his chest, aching and longing without any semblance of resolve. He's angry—biting and cold and all consuming—because he doesn't know why the kid's at school don't like him. He can't fathom why public school is so much harder than private, and why half his teachers keep casting weary glances his way and the other half watch him with eyes filled with pity. 

He doesn't like the metallic taste the burning anger in his chest leaves him with, hates how much he'd looked in the mirror tonight and seen his father staring back at him—but even alone and with the rest of his life at his back, it still spirals and weaves in between his ribs, corrosive and mordant. 

He walks down the sides of perfectly paved roads, gazes up at lit up houses at the ends of long driveways and wonders if they're all just as cold and medicinal as his own. Wonders, and maybe even hopes a little, that at least some of them foster some beam of warmth that his mother's art studio once carved out of his own cold upbringing. Now yet another office for his father, his mom's paintings, books, and presence are gone. 

Nothing but a fresh coat of paint could replace Zuko's stenciled height tallies in the doorframe that his mother has recorded since he was 2, just as the crayon Zuko had etched into the empty fireplace as he watched his mom work at her desk when he first started drawing will always be there. There are remnants of sun soaked summer days, of father's business trips where the unused pool in the backyard was filled with laughter and music and energy so bright and expansive that even Azula joined in on the fun. Remnants no one but Zuko has access to, and it feels desperately lonely. 

Zuko holds onto these memories, let's them fester and manifest in place of the caustic anger burning holes through his soul. 

His father doesn't hesitate in laying his hands on him repeatedly in between the times that Zuko runs off into the night, but it comes to a head nearly two years later when Zuko is 13 and has failed a Pre-Calc quiz for a college prep course he's wildly underprepared for, and his father twists his arm so far Zuko hears it pop sharply as it dislocates. 

One of the household staff puts it in a sling once his father's disappeared into the night nearly an hour later, but she offers no words of comfort nor any concealment of the bruise blooming high on his cheek. Zuko's 13, and he's smart enough to know not to make mistakes like that, but he still agonizingly wishes for his mom's gentle touch and soft words. 

He's 13, and he's old enough to question where she is, and be angry that she didn't take him with her. Nothing feels easy and simple anymore, and hasn't for a while. 

He makes up his bed so that it looks like he's asleep in it, not foolish enough to believe his father would care enough to check up on him in the night anyways (nor if his father is going to return tonight, anyways), but not willing to bare the consequences of a fluke. He slips out into the night again, and walks as far as he can in one direction. 

He's still in his school clothes, dark slacks and a respectable polo, black windbreaker pulled over to fight against the November chill, so when he stumbled across of group of teenagers in the parking lot of some abandoned retail store, maybe 3 or 4 years older than him, he sticks out like a sore thumb. 

With hats pulling back long and wild hair, shirts adorning the names of bands Zuko's never even heard of and small boards tucked under their arms, varying in design and shape and yet absolutely tantalizing, there's no question that Zuko, Izod clad and painfully young, doesn't belong here. But they call him over regardless. For some reason, Zuko goes. 

"Where'd you get the bruises, kid?" One of them asks, tall and skinny and rough looking, something that looks close to a cigarette but smells like a whole other world of hurt to Zuko hanging from his lips, bouncing along with his words. His hair is long and curly, dark and messy across his shoulders, and Zuko finds himself hung up on this fact for some reason, when he really should be panicking at the prospect of coming at the call of a bunch of tough looking teenagers—thoughts of what his father would do if he knew flashes through his mind. 

"Relax, dude. We aren't gonna mug you, or some shit," one of them calls from where he's lounging across a gross and tattered couch, pushing at one of his friends trying to pluck a flask from his fingers. His eyes stay on Zuko. 

"Unless you've got daddy's credit card on you?" Long-hair buts in again, grin sharp and mischievous, and Zuko feels panic crawl up his throat as his eyes rake over Zuko's appearance, catching on his clothes and brands. "Kidding," he adds, though it does nothing to calm his nerves. "You gonna answer my question?" He continues, waving a hand in front of Zuko's face and hovering over his bruise. Zuko bristles and glares, crosses his arms over his chest as a few of the group hoot and laugh. Zuko's not naive enough to believe it's not entirely at his expense, and feels embarrassment heat up his cheeks. 

"Nothing. Tripped and fell," he finally settles on, and as the rest of the group moves on to laugh and holler at one of their friends that's just tumbled on his skateboard, long-hair zeroes in on Zuko. He hums, smile slipping away and molding into a smug grin. 

"Right. Into your dad's ring, or?" Zuko splutters, because the guy's bluffing, and doesn't know—can't know—anything about what the fuck Zuko's night has been like, and yet.. "I'm not gonna force it outta you. Whatever. I'm just saying—most of us here know exactly what those 'clumsy tendencies' mean more than anyone sheltered away in whatever Hills mansion you crawled out of," he tone clips, words more heated and quick than the languid and carefree ones of before, but he slips back into it before Zuko has time to analyze what that means. 

He should just leave, should book it back to the house and forget this ever happened, but something keeps him there. He feels like his feet are glued to the tore up pavement below him, despite every bone in his body screaming to get away. 

"How old are you, anyways?" He continues, even though his words sound disinterested and still somewhat short. Zuko bristles at the question, and a look of amusement works it's way across the guy's features. 

"13," he answers tersely, arms still hugged around his stomach. The guys whistles low and long and shakes his head. 

"Fuck, man. You look like a little adult, what the hell," he laughs, and Zuko's never heard someone swear in such a light way. There's no heat behind his words, mostly just unbridled amusement, which again, Zuko knows is at his expense. He'll take being at the tail end of someone's amusement over their anger any day. "I'm Lee. You wanna have a beer and chill for a bit?"

"I don't drink," is the first thing Zuko's able to contribute, and Lee's eyes crinkle, a bemused smile toying at his lips. 

"Course you don't. Well, we don't have any juice boxes, but you're welcome to hang for a bit anyways. Got a name, Val?"

Zuko stays. He sits on a tattered and rough couch in an empty parking lot on a chilly November evening and watches them do trick after trick on their skateboards, mesmerized, and eventually stops jumping at every brash laugh and boisterous comment. 

Lee drives him home. Tells him to come back tomorrow. He does.

Zuko first skates in that parking lot, a few paces before wiping out and feeling his first burst of pain that's cathartic rather than detrimental. He goes back, over and over, learns a few things from a lot of the guys, in some ways starts to feel like their little pet, finds the beginning of his own odd sense of belonging. They make fun of him and mess with him, egged on by his defensiveness and awkwardness, but it feels different than it does with the kid's at school, mean and snide without restraint. So he keeps hanging out with the older teens, and fumbles his way through the basics of skating. His father doesn't notice the additional bruises on his body, likely wouldn't even care if he did, and suspects nothing. 

Lee drives him home one night, as out of place in the Hills as Zuko had been that first night, and when he hands him a tattered wooden board from his trunk, Zuko feels something for the first time, feels his heart tug and his throat close up, and it feels good, but somehow he knows it's bad. Lee's smile is warm and kind, and Zuko feels fear crash over him like ice cold rain. 

He sits in the middle of his room that night and stares at the board in front of him, wraps his head around the fact that he's got a crush on a boy, and cries.

He doesn't ever go back.

~

Sokka's house is big.

Not in an uppity way, like Toph's and his childhood and even to an extent Suki's home are, but it's large and full and above all warm. Zuko knows near immediately that it's the exact kind of place he wishes he'd grown up in. 

The exterior siding is blue and fading from years of California sun, plants and flowers growing and wrapping around the deep front porch. Zuko doesn't think the word 'run-down' is quite accurate, because something about the lack of image in the facade and outside just give off a well loved feeling opposed to a trodden one. Cared for is maybe a better word. There's a BLM flag flying from a porch post and a pride flag taped up in the front window, which causes Zuko a momentary short circuit. The porch furniture is clearly used and realistically placed, no need for show, and when he enters—

He maybe kinda sorta wants to move in immediately. With Uncle in tow, of course. 

Every wall of the foyer/living room is bleeding personality, from family photos to shoddy childhood drawings, awards and medals for swim and surfing competitions alike. It's messy and cluttered, indications of a busy and full house filling Zuko with an unparalleled sense of longing. Appa runs up to greet the pair immediately, leaving the group from where they're all lounging on and around the large brown sectional, talking over some music videos playing from YouTube. 

Zuko wants to take a closer look at the decor all around, but notices Sokka struggling with the pizza boxes and rushes forward to help him. The rest of the group expresses their excitement and rushes towards where Sokka's leading them to the kitchen (which is just as cozy and nice as the living room), and they set the pizzas down on the counter island. Suki catches Zuko's eye as they head that way, one perfectly manicured eyebrow raising in an unspoken question, a smile he doesn't quite feel comfortable with on her lips. Zuko doesn't offer an answer, isn't sure if he's equipped to at the moment.

"Hey, Zuko!" Aang greets cheerily, clapping him on the shoulder and Zuko—doesn't flinch? 

"Zuko, I want you and Toph to both understand just how sacred movie nights are," Katara says in lieu of greeting, leveling him with a serious stare that he's pretty sure is faux. He doesn't have a beat on her, though, and can't draw any similarities between her and Sokka besides physical attributes that would help him at all. She's still closed off with him, casts sidelong glances and distrustful looks his way frequently, besides accepting Toph without a beat but toeing around him for little reason. He doesn't get it, but he's trying not to push. 

"Ease up, Tara," Toph says for him, and Zuko smiles to himself as Katara softens at the nickname, blesses Toph's bluntness and ability to be forceful in places where Zuko's hesitant. "You're stuck with us, now. No rescinding the offer." 

Sokka and Toph equally tear into a meat lovers pizza. Katara and Suki tastefully go at the Supreme, and Zuko eats the cauliflower crust with Aang in solidarity. 

Properly carb loaded and bloated, Sokka very loudly declares movie night commence, and drags everyone—Zuko literally at the front of the charge with him—back into the living room to settle in. Katara disappears upstairs to grab excess blankets and pillows. Sokka tugs Zuko after him onto the only furniture separate from the sectional, a big cushy two seater that's bright blue and corduroy, and Zuko happily obliges. 

Katara first tosses a ton of pillows down the stairs, then returns with what seems like endless armfuls of soft blankets. Suki helps in tossing a few of the pillows onto the couch but mostly splays them in the sectioned off patch of floor that the sectional and loveseat encompass, coffee table pushed towards the wall the television is mounted on for the time being, and passes two particularly fluffy ones to the two of them, still trying to catch Zuko's eye. 

Sokka shoots him a grin as he snags a few extra pillows, and Zuko accepts his fate and tugs the blanket over him, shifting so that his legs occupy the space behind Sokka. He doesn't seem to oppose the presence of Zuko's feet, and Zuko doesn't object when Sokka leans back and sets his feet on the pushed off coffee table and throws his own blanket over him, back pushing back against the lower half of Zuko's legs. 

"Okay?" Sokka shoots his way as everyone else clambers to find their own comfort. Zuko nods, shoots him a small smile that he gets back in return, and watches Sokka as he turns back to watch the group around them. Zuko's comfy, and Sokka appears to be too, really. He hopes so, at least. 

Aang and Katara settle into the makeshift pillow-blanket fort on the floor and Suki and Toph occupy either end of the couch with enough room for others if need be, and Zuko wonders how it was before him and Toph started hanging out. If it was more comfortable, less cramped and maybe even easier—

Sokka nudges Zuko's knee with his elbow and he looks back over at him. Sokka sticks his tongue out at him and screws his eyes shut, fanning his palms out at either of his ears and wiggling his fingers. Zuko can't help the small laugh that escapes him because Sokka is ridiculous, but he knows deep down Sokka's intentions are anything but. 

He spilled his guts earlier. Laid out pieces of the puzzle that only Iroh and his family know about, talked to him about his sister, showed him his room—indirectly alluded to his father. A shiver curls down his spine and he disguises it by burying further into his blanket. It smells like Snuggle. 

"Hey, Zuko?" Zuko shifts slightly to look over at Suki, raising his eyebrows to convey his acknowledgement. She's got her head hanging over the edge of the couch as she looks at him, face red from the blood rushing to her head. "Are you staying over tonight?"

"I mean, if you guys want me to?"

"You'll break my heart if you don't." Sokka grabs at his chest dramatically, gives him a puppy dog pout that's exaggerated and yet still harbors a lot of charm, and Zuko nudges him in the back with his foot. Suki turns the question on Toph and effectively turns the attention away from him, and Zuko pulls out his phone. 

To: Parental Unit (7:34 pm)

Hey, is it okay if I stay over at Katara and Sokka's for movie night?

I'll be back first thing in the morning to help with the shop, promise

His uncles response is damn near instantaneous. 

From: Parental Unit (7:34 pm)

Of course!!! :)

Please don't worry about coming back so early. Enjoy the day with your friends! Bring them by the shop for tea, I'd love to see you all together. 

I'm glad that you're happy, nephew. Enjoy yourself. 

To: Parental Unit (7:36 pm)

Thank you. I really am, Uncle. 

Zuko's fingers hover over the keys for a beat, before he types out a second message hastily and tucks his phone away before he thinks on it too much. 

To: Parental Unit (7:36 pm)

Love you

Zuko stares down at his lap for a while as debate over what movie to watch rages on around him. These past few weeks have been—something. Between his new friendships with the group and his strengthening ones with Toph and Suki because of that, he's socialized more than in the past 7 months he's been with his uncle. Between his growing comfort with Sokka and seemingly uncontrollable confessions about his past, he feels emotionally drained, despite hardly giving him anything. But it's not a bad feeling?

He feels no pressure, or haste. Everything about his life right now feels like sinking in, and tucking the parameters of the things he cares about around him. Like a blanket, maybe—he feels secure, at home, with his friends, with his life. There are things he could dwell on that could easily dissipate that feeling, but for the time being he doesn't want to. Just wants to relish in that freedom, and continue carving out the path he's set out on with the people he cares about most. 

He's really tired, but not in a sleep away the pain kind of way, which, he thinks at least, has got to bare some kind of indication to astronomical progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could honestly write a whole standalone story about the Zuko that exists in this au. Instead, enjoy a little tidbit I repeatedly chopped back because of how wordy it was getting.
> 
> Hopefully the majority of this being Zuko introspection isn’t too disappointing—a few of you were asking for some more of Zuko’s story in your comments, so here’s some pre-Jet somewhat sweet but mostly angsty preteen Zuko. :)) I can’t help myself and this’ll prolly be expanded upon a lot more whoops
> 
> Bad news: this is the last fully pre-written chapter I have prepared to upload. The only reason I’ve been able to update so fast has been the work I’ve put into this story the past two months before I even had the idea of ever publishing and was writing just to write—this story is not and will not be abandoned!! I have so much more in store for these characters, and am only being slightly dramatic as I say this because of how much I think about this story and with how much I want to put into it. I doubt that there will be very much difference in my posting schedule, but I just wanted to give warning in case their is. Stick around, we’re only just getting around to the ways Sokka’s going to be going about courting Zuko ;)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, leaving kudos, and commenting. This story and you guys give me life, keep kicking ass <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka and Zuko enjoy a languid morning together. The Gaang goes roller skating.

Zuko's plotting an escape plan. 

Well, maybe not escape, per se, more so an extraction. Regardless, he has two problems. The first being his flamingly hindering sleep deprivation, and the second pertaining to the heavy 17 year old boy asleep onto of Zuko's staticky legs. Zuko wiggles his toes, feels them bump against Sokka's back, and wonders if he'll ever have the opportunity to be close to Sokka like this again—like yesterday evening. 

He doesn't need to have an existential crisis over the fragility of his life right now, doesn't need to work himself up under the notion of holding onto the good while it lasts, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. At least not when he's spent the better part of an involuntarily all nighter memorizing the details of Sokka's face, holding on with the same desperation that keeps him sunk into all the warm memories burying themselves into the grooves of his heart carved out by all the bad. He feels like a camcorder, sometimes, trying to take everything and bask in what he can get until everything unspools around him like life is so inclined to do. 

He heaves a deep sigh, tips his head back so it lulls back against the arm of the loveseat, and blinks away his spotty vision in the dark. 

Zuko's had his eyes trained to the Hulu profile screen for what has to have been a few hours by now, since Toph had conked out during an episode of Hell's Kitchen and the autoplay has since played out, the remote far across the room between Suki and Toph. And Zuko—Zuko can hardly fall asleep normally, let alone in a room full of people. People he's come to know to trust, sure, but people all the same. The whole thing was foolish from the start, and yet a night of laughter and debate and somehow chaotic peace is worth giving up a few hours of sleep over tenfold. 

But by now, as his eyes itch more and more and his throat grows scratchy, headache building behind his temple, he needs to stretch, go sit on the porch for a minute or something at least—

"Zuko?" Zuko freezes, curls his toes and buries them in the blanket. He tips his head back up, uncomfortable crick in his neck pulling as he does so. It's worth it for the sight of a sleep rumpled Sokka, hair pulled off to one side and wild, brow furrowed and eyes puffy. "The fuck, man," he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes, and Zuko stays still, wondering if maybe he'll just pass back out. He's been completely still for most of the night since he'd fallen asleep during What We Do in the Shadows, and Zuko had come to the conclusion that he's a heavy sleeper. 

He doesn't budge though, instead sitting up further and continuing to rub at his eyes as if it'll do anything to counter the exhaustion. Futile. 

"You're dreaming," Zuko whispers, waving his fingers in Sokka's face, and Zuko's voice sounds strange after hours of silence, croaky and weird in the heavy quiet in the room. He clears his throat as Sokka snorts.

"Shut up," he mumbles, nudging his with his foot and shifting upwards so that Zuko's free. Zuko huffs a laugh. "Why're you awake? Sun's not even up, man."

"Coming from you?" Zuko shoots back with a grin, eyes pointedly darting to the large surfboard propped against the bannister of the stairs. Sokka rolls his eyes. Zuko clears his throat once more. "Your knobby knees woke me up, if you want the truth."

"..shit. Really?"

"You're not a morning person, are you?" Sokka narrows his eyes. 

"Coming from you?" He parrots, and Zuko tilts his head back once more, biting back a laugh as Sokka grouses a bit more before eventually sitting up fully, slinging his legs over the side of the couch. "C'mon, asshole."

Zuko doesn't question it, rises on still asleep legs and does his best not to trip over Katara and Aang's still sleeping forms on the floor. Sokka harbors none of the same sentiment and barrels onward, stumbling through the dark living room and around towards the stairs. Except his right foot hooks around the bottom edge of the board and sends it flying backwards. Sokka whirls around to try and grab it at the same time that Zuko dips down to do the same. But Sokka's sleep heavy limbs overshoot it, knocking instead in the end table pushed to the opposite side, which, of course, thumps loudly against the back of the couch. 

Sokka snorts. Zuko chucks a stray pillow at him.

Zuko follows Sokka up the stairs blindly, straining in the low morning light to catch glimpses of the photographs floating upwards across the whole side wall. Sokka stumbles up at the top, and Zuko takes the lapse to lightly run his fingers across the frame of one of the pictures—obviously Sokka and Katara, on the beach and grinning up at the camera with another woman off to the side, distinct surfboard tucked to her side and gaze set on the ocean. Zuko glances over at Sokka—rubbing at where he'd banged his foot on the top step—then back to the picture, and sees that same expression in the woman that he sees in Sokka every morning on the beach. Their mom, Zuko mulls over in his head, and once he's thought it, it's all he can see. 

"Zuko?" Sokka looks back over his shoulder as he finally pulls his gaze away from the picture, and his eyes catch on the particular picture, features drawing slightly before he wordlessly turns and heads onward into the dark hallway. Zuko casts one last look towards the picture, before following after him. 

He keeps his eyes trained down on their feet, focuses on the stumbling and heavy-footed steps Sokka takes in front of him and tries to mimic them verbatim. It's fruitless, and silly, but Zuko's sleep deprived and entertained by Sokka's own sleepiness. 

Sokka pushes at the door at the end of the hall, grumbling something about 'swelling wood' as he does so, before it gives and he stumbles forward. Zuko swallows as he watches Sokka's back retreat into the room, understands where exactly Sokka is takin him and hesitates. He sees the lights flick on and send long beams down to hallway that streak across worn wood and basks in the momentary heat that fans across his bare foot. 

Zuko thinks back to last night, to the openness and vulnerability that he'd felt with Sokka in his room, seeing his things and fitting together pieces of Zuko he's too weak to flesh out. There's something terrifyingly personal about a bedroom, and yet when Zuko watches Sokka extend his arms up and stretch out of his back slow and languid, he feels a spike of warmth break through his apprehension as he steps forward. 

The paneled walls are painted over with a fading aqua, peaks of the wood beneath streaking through in dark patches, though very little of the wall is actually shown, Zuko realizes as he takes everything in. On the side closest to the door is Sokka's bed, unmade and shrouded in blankets and pillows of all sort somehow perfectly in place. A large and warm tapestry hangs above it, juxtaposing the cool tones of the room and emitting warm light from the Christmas lights framed around it. 

There's a large bulletin board overflowing with varying pictures of any and everything, people and places and things, and Zuko knows that knowing Sokka any one of them comes with a story. There're a few larger movie posters around the place as well—notably a couple of Tarantino and Fincher ones, fraying at the edges and tacked up next to miscellaneous little trinkets and oddities, ones Zuko knows he could spend hours listening to Sokka recount those same stories of—but most notably and yet also unsurprisingly is the large surfboard hung up above the head of his bed. 

It's untouched, the space around it some of the only unoccupied territory on the walls, and Zuko narrows his eyes and looks at it closer. It's a rich blue, stark against the light and faded of the room, and in the center lies a chiseled and slightly carved out pearlescent pendant—three rounded out waves curling into nautiluses. Zuko falters, remembers that picture in the hall, and feels his stomach twist unpleasantly. 

"It was my mom's," Sokka explains from where he's standing by the open window, features drawn just as they were before as he gazes at the board. And even though Zuko had drawn that conclusion, it feels like a pretty substantial omission. 

"It's pretty," Zuko responds inadequately, but Sokka's either still not awake enough to notice or not fazed enough to have any reaction. Instead, he shakes himself of his daze, eyes snapping away from the board and landing on Zuko as a grin crosses his features. 

"C'mon," he says, before turning and disappearing out the open window. Zuko narrows his eyes, feels confusion overtake him momentarily before he shakes his head and follows after him. And—oh. 

Sokka sits with his leg stretched out in front of him on the portion of the roof that covers the front porch, small smile quirking up one side of his mouth as he trains his eyes at the horizon. Zuko sits himself beside him, drawing his knees up and feeling the first scraps of Summer heat across his face. The morning's teetering on that state of impermanence where it's somehow still dark and light out, purples and blues of the night giving way to the oranges, reds, and yellow: of the day—but for now, both occupy their own little piece of Venice Beach in harmony. A piece that somehow feels privy to only him and Sokka, right now. The world feels asleep around them, languorous in a way that feels wildly special. 

On the crest of town before all the tourist traps and condos, from this angle Sokka's house is just at the right spot to get a glimpse of the sun cresting over the water. It's blinding, bright and sparkling, and Zuko sighs deeply, breathes in the last inklings of night and exhales into the new day. 

"It's weird not being down there," Sokka says after a beat, and Zuko looks over at him, traces the sharp and long angle of his jaw, rakes over his soft eyes and that stupid fucking hair that's still down and driving him nuts. He's leaned back and bracing himself on his arms, palms flat against the shale and muscles flexing naturally—Zuko's obviously never thought to be thankful for whoever invented surfboarding, but in that moment he bestows whatever little faith is left in him in that glorious beast. He's weak-willed, and dramatic, and so, so gone. A combination he knows from experience is dangerous. 

"You're a junkie," Zuko says almost involuntarily, a laugh breaking through his words as Sokka leans back further and tips his chin towards the sky. The sun breaks over the houses down closer to the water, bathing them in the heat and making Sokka absolutely glow. 

"Hm. Maybe," he says, smiling as he cranes his neck back and let's the sun hit him there. Zuko watches the peace overcome him, sees the rise and fall of a heavy sigh release the tension from his shoulders and mimics the movement, seeking the same absolution as he gives himself to the sun. He feels like he could fall asleep, slumped against the worn blue siding of the house and with the warmth of the day to lull him away. "What does it say?"

Zuko peels his eyes opens, feels the sleep slip away from him and glances over at Sokka, who's now fully sitting up again and is no longer basking in the sun, instead staring down at Zuko's arm. Zuko follows his gaze down to where his old worn hoodie has creeped up, already large sleeve exposing his wrist and the tail end of his forearm—his tattoo.

He reaches over and tugs up the sleeve the rest of the way, fingers trailing over the characters out of habit as he cranes it towards Sokka, who leans forward further. 

"Never give up without a fight. It's something my uncle used to say to me when I was—before I moved in with him. I got it the first day after he got custody."

Sokka stays quiet, and Zuko appreciates it exponentially more than any other placations or questions anyone else would have asked. Instead of speaking, he reaches over and curls his fingers around his wrist, bringing it closer to his face and looking at it bright eyes. Zuko's immediate reaction is to jerk away and wrench his wrist back, but when he looks down and catches sight of the shoddy flowers drawn across Sokka's wrist, slightly fading and smudged, Zuko thinks of that moment on the beach last night. Of all the moments, really—of skating, and surfing, and building up to something and..and trusting. He trusts Sokka. Really and wholly trusts him. And it doesn't make him want to throw up. 

He lets Sokka cradle his wrist in his hands long after he's looked over the ink imbedded there, and watches the sun continue to rise over the city that's given him so much already between fresh starts and new beginnings, and whatever other cheesy therapy bullshit he hasn't had the capacity to grasp until now, apparently. He mulls over the word 'trust' in his head over and over again. 

~

It's a Tuesday night, and it's one that reminds Sokka of why Summer break wears thin with inclement weather.

The rain hasn’t broken for the past few days, the ocean merely a constant thrum in the background of his day to day, churning and violent and unstable. Mornings have been quiet and alone against the normal chaos of dawn patrol, waking up early regardless of the lack of need just out of habit, stumbling around the house with Katara for a few hours before a shift at the shop. Rhythmic, sure, almost like it was before the storms began, but exponentially more boring and lonely.

Which is why when he gets the text from Zuko on the tail end of his shift, everything seems to brighten.

From: Zuko (6:38 pm)

Hey, so ik its short notice but Mai and Ty Lee are coming back down to visit tonight and we’re all gonna go roller skating later. You wanna come with? 

Suki’s gonna go too, and I really don’t wanna third wheel with Mai :/

To: Zuko (6:38 pm)

uhm duh ofc

i suck at roller skating but i will Try

i miss everyone :((((((

Sokka hovers over the keys, deliberates saying what he really wants to but is afraid to, but before he gets the chance Zuko shoots off another text.

From: Zuko (6:39 pm)

Same, it’s been kinda weird these past few days

Which Sokka hopes is Zuko speak for: ‘I miss everyone too.’

From: Zuko (6:39 pm)

Can you get Katara and Aang on board? Some shit’s going down up front n I gotta go deal w it smh 

Toph’s her rn with me for a while longer, but do you think you can pick her up on your way to the rink?? 

To: Zuko (6:40 pm) 

sure thing, good luck csr ;)

With the endgame of seeing his friends again tonight in sight, Sokka manages to blitz through the end of his shift unscathed. He tells Gran Gran the developing plan when she comes out from the back to start closing things up, and when the doors finally close shut behind him he books it to the house, tripping over flip-flop-clad feet as he damn near sprints through town. 

Katara’s conveniently lounging on the front porch with Appa and Aang when Sokka gets there, and he grins at both of them as he takes the steps in two long strides. 

“Get ready—Mai and Ty Lee are in town so we’re all going roller skating. Bus is leaving in ten minutes,” he says before throwing a wink over his shoulder as Aang and Katara spring up and start chattering excitedly. He hears Appa’s claws clatter against the wooden porch as he bounces around them excitedly, casts one last look behind him and smiles, before heading upstairs and changing into—unfortunately and unnaturally—a pair of scuffed jeans and a shirt that he hasn’t been stuck in all day. He cuffs the end of the jeans up around the bottom of his calf and slides into sandals, being sure to tuck a few pairs of socks into his bag, knowing his friends well enough to know a potential issue arising, and checks his phone to read the text Zuko had sent him with the plan earlier.

The girls and Zuko are heading up to Glendale around 7:30–a quick look at his phone tells him it’s nearing then, now—and they’re all gonna eat there. Sokka’s never been to the particular place Suki picked, but Zuko’s left a link to Google Maps so he slings his bag over his shoulder and heads back downstairs. Luckily for him, Katara and Aang are both sitting on the couch all ready to go, Minecraft server pulled up on both of their phones as they continue their usual ever persisting dialogue Sokka has trouble keeping up with. Maybe he’s just old now, but he definitely doesn’t remember having as much energy as Aang and Katara do now during his sophomore year.

When they see him they rise without a lull in their conversation, headed towards the door and leaving Sokka to follow. Katara’s hand brushes against Aang’s on the way out and Sokka revels in the high blush that rises on his cheeks. He shoots Aang a shit-eating grin when he looks over his shoulder at him, before quickly looking back forward somehow even redder than before. The orange tank top he’s wearing leaves a fading line of yellow bruises pressed into the back of his shoulder exposed, and Sokka narrows his eyes, leans forward to try and get a closer look at a pattern that looks strikingly familiar before—

Before they hit the steps down and he nearly topples right into Aang’s back. By some miracle, he doesn’t, and by the time he recovers Aang and Katara have both slipped into the middle row of van seats. He shakes his head, filed away the images of the bruises for later and rounds the car to get in the drivers side. 

They head to Toph’s, and Katara hijacks the stereo on the way there, blasts her Top 100s that her and Aang both jam to, and Sokka misses the time  
with Zuko in his passenger seat like a phantom limb, misses watching him from the corner of his eye work his way out of his shell and relax into singing along to blink-182 with him, comfortable and free and exposing pieces of a person Sokka is so desperately trying to break through to. 

He tried to focus on the road, eyes involuntarily darting back down to the patch of skin on his forearm long since void of Zuko’s drawings, and remembers. 

~

It’s 80s night. Of course it is. 

Zuko’s both thrilled and horrified by this concept, because between the Men at Work blasting from the system and the hyper colorized outfits of employees and skaters alike, he somehow both loves and hates it. Mostly loves, more-so obligatorily hates. 

He sits at a table on the rinks small cafe area with Ty Lee and Mai as Suki rents out their skates and smiles to himself. He watches a little girl fall to the ground and bound back up again, repeatedly picking herself up from the worn wood of the rink before finally making it all the way around without the wall, running on her toe stops as fast as she can towards her mom, who scoops her up into her arms and smiles. Everything fades away as he thinks of Kiyi, thinks of himself, and most of all thinks of Azula. It doesn’t feel as corrosive as it should. 

“Hey, can I ask you something?” 

Zuko tears his gaze away from the family as the music comes back into the foreground. When he looks back over at Mai, he realizes they’re alone. Ty Lee is across the room in line with Suki now, both looking lovesick and enraptured with one another. It’s cute, but Zuko would never say that out loud. He turns his attention back to Mai, who looks almost apprehensive?

“Do you know how Suki got into the whole roller derby thing?” She asks, and Zuko notices her downcast eyes, her usual and natural apathy now seemingly purposeful. 

“Not really,” he says, frowning deeply when Mai seems to tense at his answer. “Why?”

“It’s stupid. I don’t know,” she says shortly and clipped, shaking her head and looking out at the rink. Zuko wants to press her, but also knows more than anyone Mai is more like him than anyone else in their sphere, and won’t react well. She saves him the trouble. “I just—Ty Lee was saying she wanted to join. And I know it’s just because she likes Suki, but I kinda wanted to, too. Try it, at least.”

Zuko feels a smile ease it’s way onto his face, feels something warm and bright bloom in his chest, and nudges her with his shoulder. 

“It’s not stupid. If you wanna do it and it’d make you happy, you should go for it. If you don’t want me to ask Suki about it, there’s another girl on the team—Jin—that works weekend shifts at the shop. I can ask her how she got started, if you want,” he says, and Mai looks away from the rink and over at him, slow and careful. She narrows her eyes. 

“You’re really different,” she says after a beat, catching him off guard, and Zuko falters. “When did you get some positive about everything?” Tones of warmth and amusement bleed through her pessimistic words and all Zuko can do is bite back another smile, shaking his head and not knowing how to find the words to describe just how different his life has become over the course of this summer. 

“Zuko!” 

Zuko feels the smile he’d been biting back break through as he turns to see Aang bouncing towards him, Katara and Sokka in tow, before he tosses his arms around Zuko’s neck and fusses up his hair. Zuko pushes at him halfheartedly, grousing without any heat as Aang laughs over him, infectious and consuming. Zuko catches Sokka’s eye over his shoulder, his features shadowed out in the fluctuating neon lights of the rink—purple, blue, red. pink, orange—fading across Sokka’s face as crappy 80s synth tunes blare around them. 

“Oh,” he hears Mai say long and low from beside him, drawing him out of his reverie as Aang situates himself next to Zuko on his other side. She looks slightly smug, smile knowing and telling, and Zuko doesn’t even want to try to dispute it. 

It takes a while and a lot of fussing, but eventually everyone’s got their skates on and are ready to go. Zuko’s not the most experienced on roller skates, but he’s done his fair share and has good enough balance to at least have his bearings as he adjusts. Suki, of course, is the most fluid when she hits the rink, followed, unsurprisingly by Ty Lee following along after her with little issue. Katara and Toph embark inexperienced after them, hand in hand and tucked up against the wall. Mai, features drawn and looking determined and single minded, tries her luck against the long wall with the rail, getting her footing and working her way long and straight down the wall successfully. Aang is chaos incarnated, the quintessential skateboarder that’s trying roller skating, feet heavy and faster than he should be but experienced enough with balance to keep himself upright. Zuko laughs to himself as he barrels his way across the rink, only goal in mind staying on his feet and going fast. 

When Zuko turns to look back for Sokka, he’s got his arms braced back, hands wrapped around the metal railing, and is staring down at his feet. Zuko shakes his head and skates over to him, bracing himself against the wall in a similar fashion as Sokka looks over at him. He grins. 

“I forgot how intimidating this is,” he says, moving one foot back and forward a bit almost for emphasis. “Somehow gives me more respect for the derby team, honestly.”

“You’ve already got good balance. Just don’t be a psycho like Aang and take it slow,” Zuko says, jerking his head towards where Aang makes a hard and fast stop against the wall next to where Katara and Toph are taking a break. Zuko turns away from them and looks back over at Sokka, and extends his hand to him. Sokka looks at it then back up at his eyes, a wordless question hanging between them, but Zuko doesn’t rescind his offer. 

He pushes off the wall lightly as he takes Zuko’s hand, stumbling forward and nearly buckling as he does so, but Zuko tugs on his hand gently and catches his elbow with his other. Sokka huffs a laugh, shaking his head once more and smiling up at Zuko. 

Zuko tugs on their hands slightly, easing Sokka forward and him backward, and it seems to be working with keeping him upright so he swings himself around to be on Sokka’s right so that he’s between him and the wall and tugs him forward some more. Eventually, Sokka pushes off with his toe stop and pushes them forward a bit faster, and Sokka beams as he regains his footing and balance and relies less on the wall and more just focuses on the movement. 

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles to himself, finally looking up from his feet, and Zuko is stuck once more by Sokka shrouded in the rich colors of the neon lights, Major Tom bouncing off of the walls around them in time with his heart beating loud and hard against his ribs. “Think I got this,” he mutters, but doesn’t make any move to remove his hand from Zuko’s, either, so Zuko doesn’t bother. Sokka’s hand is smooth and warm in his, and if anyone asks, it’s for balance purposes only.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why oh why do I feel the compulsive need to write hundreds of words about setting opposed to actual plot—please send help.
> 
> Self indulgent filler chapter, but I love roller rinks and miss them sm since my local ones are closed down right now :(( next chapter is a lot more uhm plot heavy? At least it should be if it doesn’t get chopped down more yikes 
> 
> Thanks to all you beautiful people for reading and commenting, love you all <33


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka and Katara get a surprise. More heftily, Zuko grapples with a very difficult day, and seeks out Sokka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t proofread this—so sorry for any grammatical/spelling errors.

Sokka wakes up to screaming. 

Well, not screaming, continuous—a scream. Katara’s scream. Singular. A shriek?

He’s racing out of bed fast and haphazardly, heart pounding as his legs catches on the blankets looped around his ankles. He kicks them away fruitlessly, narrowly avoids face-planting into the floor, checks Katara’s empty room, and proceeds to book it down the stairs two at a time. The house is dark and angular, and Sokka would be half convinced it was still the middle of the night if not for the alluring scent of coffee wafting from the kitchen. 

He doesn’t make it far into his investigation when he rounds around the bannister and nearly knocks Gran-Gran down where she’s standing by the front door. She looks over her shoulder at him, momentarily startled, before her features soften out and a warm smile stretches across her features in the dim, dim light. 

“Is everything okay—“

“I can’t believe you’re here!” 

Katara’s voice is muffled despite its close proximity, and Sokka toes around Gran-Gran carefully to get a good look at her. 

Katara, in her rumpled sleeping clothes, hair a mess and tears slipping from the corners of her eyes, arms thrown around a looming figure in the doorway. Katara, hugging their estranged father in the low morning light. 

“Holy shit,” Sokka breathes as Katara let’s him go, wipes at her eyes futilely and backs towards Gran-Gran, who lightly smacks Sokka on the hip for his language. He hardly registers it, eyes locked onto an ever reminiscent and yet achingly foreign face, before the dam in his heart breaks loose and he lunges himself at his dad, holds on fast and tight and so hard that he hopes he can never leave again. 

“Woah, hey, Skip—it’s good to see you too,” he says, voice deep and familiar and warm, and Sokka holds tighter. He feels his father’s arms wrap around his back just as tight, feels Katara squeeze herself in the middle moments later, and feels a long and deep breath he didn’t know he’d been holding float up to the ceiling. 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he finally manages, because he hasn’t seen him in about 5 months, and he was supposed to see him for another. “How are you here? What about the boats, and-and Bato—is everything okay? Is—“

“Sokka, shut up,” Katara hisses as they pull away, but her eyes are shining and her smile is bright. His dad’s smiling, too, regardless of the long and deep lines of his face and the well known aging of exhaustion plaguing him. Sokka’s relieved to see him, and exponentially overjoyed, but nagging apprehension gnaws at him at the question of ‘why’ he’s here. 

Gran-Gran pushes a warm cup of coffee into his hands, and things right themselves a bit as it settles in, exhaustion coming to its rightful place in the forefront as immediate panic and then elation settle back down into his chest and level out. 

Katara stays glued to his side as the settle down into the living room, bouncing with untapped excitement that Sokka feels and yet is not able to properly convey at—he checks—5:57 in the morning. 

And the ‘why’ factor of the equation doesn’t turn out to be as bad as he’d worked it up in his head to be—an accident with Bato (diffused by hasty assurances of his steady and healthy recovery) bringing to light company policy issues, a healthy temporary severance check as things are worked over in Alaskan waters. He’s home, and he’s not shedding light on everything about their situation, but Sokka looks at Katara happy and believing and accepting and tries to switch his brain into that mode, to check his negative emotions and push his positive ones. 

It isn’t very difficult, especially when, exhausted and jet lagged alike, his dad loads him and Katara up into a familiar navy truck and drives them up the PCH for dawn patrol. He’s not entirely sure there was some gaping hole left in his father’s absence that hadn’t been filled by the people he’s come to surround himself with, but it in no way negates the warmth that fills him head to toe and flushes him whole as his family picks up the broken pieces left behind at his father’s dearth over crashing waves and ice cream. 

~

Zuko’s been awake for a couple of hours, thinking over a name on the tip of his tongue for so long that his head feels about ready to explode. 

Aang is sound asleep on his couch, sporting more bruises than a night of rollerskating would merit, and Zuko feels useless. Powerless. Nearly desperate for a solution. He’d crashed for a couple of hours out of necessity, but restless and jittery had abandoned his spot with Aang on the couch and settled on the fire escape. 

And it’s had to have been a while, the sun rising up over the tops of building and warming up the cool iron under him. It’s a bright and blinding sunrise, immediately waking up the city around him and warming the coldness of the solitary hours he’s spent alone. There’s something bittersweet about a sunrise spent alone, Zuko thinks—or maybe he’s just biased now, haunted by the ghosts of Sokka’s fingertips across his wrist as the day had broken over their carved out little world. 

A name. Zuko can’t remember a name, and it’s driving him fucking insane. 

His uncle and his many friends, all virtually faceless and the same when Zuko had seen them throughout his childhood during the sparse times he’d even seen uncle himself—but one sticks out in particular, one who’d snooped around his father’s house during his final nights before a gruesome custody battle. A battle only fought because of his father’s pride and pleasure in power. A shiver runs down his back despite the dawning warmth, and Zuko suppresses that as far as he can while still thinking about the man. 

Always in the background of court cases and his hospital room, one of numerous faces whispering about him in low tones, about his present and future—and yet uncle had talked with him frequently. Had uttered words like ‘protection’ and ‘foster’ in moments Zuko was too tired to be awake and deal with the gouging eyes of those around him and pretended to be conked out just to be left alone. Fatalistic and afraid, Zuko remembers a kind smile and warm eyes. Remembers his uncle bestowing faith in the power of the man. 

Someone who could maybe help Aang.

“Zuko?”

Zuko jumps, fire escape clanging as his leg jerks in the place it’s in between the bars, and he exhales short and fast when he sees Aang, rubbing at his eyes blearily and yawning. He pulls himself out and next to Zuko, tucking his legs under him and sitting across from him with his back against the building. 

“Iroh woke me up on accident on his way down to the shop. You okay?” He asks, and Zuko frowns, refuses to look down at freshly mottled bruising around Aang’s tiny wrist, and nods. 

“Of course,” he says, though the words feel sour and biting on his tongue, despite the fact that they’re mostly true. “Just thinking,” he says, and tries not to feel so bitter about Aang interrupting him so close to his answer—as if he would actually have been any step closer if Aang hadn’t woken up. Aang scoots always from the wall and sits next to Zuko, yawns long and loud and leans his head against Zuko’s shoulder and slumps against him, and yeah—sunrises are inefficacious alone. 

~

Zuko feels off balance for about a week.

His whole world feels tilted and off kilter, the sounds around him warbled and distant, his vision perpetually fuzzy and untrustworthy, caught and drug under in the riptides of his mind. He sleeps, but wakes up and feels exhaustion creep in tenfold and more aggressive. He feels an voiceless inevitability creeping closer as days tick away and he keeps pushing forward, pushes forward as he pushes down his uncles sidelong glances and his phone’s ever constant notifications. 

He doesn’t go to morning surf, wiggles his way out of a party at Suki under the pretense of a migraine (which is only a partial lie), and proceeds to make himself sick with guilt as he thinks about all the friends he’s so undeserving of. Friends that, he realizes one night alone on the roof of the Jasmine Dragon, he doesn’t want to be without, and yet somehow isn’t quite sure how to be with in the state that he’s in—which is just terrifying and singularly pathetic, but just how his life is now, he supposed. 

He wakes up in the morning—or rolls out of bed restless and exhausted—and goes through the motions of working through a few shifts. His uncle sends him up to the apartment on the fourth day, a wordless reprieve that Zuko isn’t sure he’s entirely thankful or resentful for a loss of his daily distraction. All the while, June 19th draws in closer and the walls of his bedroom feel closer and closer.

The day comes. He pulls his blankets over his head and lets darkness wash over him, unmoving and unthinking in lieu of making a horrible, irrevocable mistake as he historically would. If he doesn’t think about, doesn’t acknowledge it beyond the explicitness of ignoring it, everything will turn out mostly okay. 

June 20th. He creeps out of bed and has a fresh and stark message from Ikem, short and simple but it causes the first emotions to crack through his shell of denial and he has to take deep and laborious breaths to keep from screaming his vocal chords raw. 

From: Ikem (2:34 pm)

Hey, kid. I know today’s a pretty awful day and I’m not likely the person that you particularly want to hear from, but I’m here for you if you need anything at all. 

Kiyi misses you more than you can even believe. Whenever you’re feeling up to it, I promised her we’d come visit. She ordered me (little tyrant) to tell you she misses and loves you, and just from me to you she hasn’t really grasped that it’s the anniversary, so she’s doing okay. I only hope that you are, too.

(img.7634)

Zuko showers. Scrubs away at a few days worth of depression and wallowing until his skin is red and his reflection unbearable. He’s not sure it’s worse to look in the mirror and see the monster lurking in all of his shadows that is his father or to see the mother whose he hears everytime his head gets too cloudy and whom he’d lost so recently. 365 days. A lifetime.

He has dinner with uncle, and they don’t talk about it, but Zuko knows if he wanted to there’d be no question he could—uncle’s learned, though, just as Zuko has, pushing doesn’t work, just makes the ache burn deeper. Between an actual meal and a few old Jeopardy reruns, he’s feeling more human. His phone is harboring a record 249 messages, and it weighs down his pocket with guilt that tastes like iron on his tongue. 

He listens to Born to Run and remembers finding a new copy of the album at a record store in Culver City to quell down the building anxiety at the image of the album burning in a large stone fireplace he got all too familiar with. The chords pull at his heart just as the fire poker had pulled at his skin, and he gets up and turns the cabinet off so violently he’s likely scratched the record. 

~ 

It’s radio silence for going on 6 days when Sokka gets a sudden and abrupt message from Zuko telling him to meet him at the skate park. It’s nearing midnight, and Sokka definitely isn’t fond of the idea of Zuko being there all alone at this hour, so he goes with old faithful sneaks out through his window and down the trusty tree. He books it to the park, makes it in record time, and spots the familiar image of Zuko’s silhouette in the low glow of the street lamps.

“I don’t know why I texted you,” Zuko says before Sokka has even rounded his side or called out to him. He frowns and pushes onward, takes not of the hood pulled low and loose over Zuko’s forehead, of the bottle of Jack hanging dangerously loose from his fingertips and of the tear tracks running down his left side. He stares out at where the ocean is rolling and churning, constant and reassuring despite darkness concealing it from their vision. 

Sokka, wrapped up in the euphoria of having his family back together again, has missed something wildly significant to one of the people he cares about most in the world, and it stings. 

He gently takes the teetering bottle from Zuko’s hand and sets it between them, hosting himself up onto the picnic table next to him and trying not to make it so obvious that he’s staring and trying to get a lay of the land. 

Zuko is wan and his eyes are deeply sunken, and Sokka wonders, seriously, if hugging Zuko would just break him into pieces. If he would shatter and scatter around him, drifting away towards the water forever a sad puzzle Sokka can’t solve. 

“I’m glad you did,” he says wholly honesty, and Zuko shakes his head, bites his lip and keeps staring, and Sokka just wants to do anything to comfort him but, as is becoming repetitive, isn’t sure how, and knows that now is a crucial time to fuck up. 

Zuko is silent beside him, nearly completely unmoving and besides his breathing entirely quiet. Sokka stays the same, creeping closer and closer to just spouting some random bullshit to dissipate the tension between them as time drags on and on. 

“It hurts,” he finally says, voice a whisper into the studded sheet of the sky, and Sokka studies his profile. The familiar expression as he looks to the sky, chin tipped up to the moon and, from Sokka’s current angle, completely untarnished by the physicality of whatever it is that made Zuko what he is today. 

Who Zuko is today— Sokka keeps thinking he doesn’t know who that is, and yet deep down he really does. Knows enough to be perpetually enraptured and enamored with him, even if he doesn’t have those chunks of the story that make this all make sense. He knows Zuko, on a level that Zuko for some reason was willing to bestow upon him. 

“What does?” Sokka says just as quiet between them, and the night is still and stiff, but the words are still carried away towards the endless line where endless space meets the endless Pacific. 

“Everything,” he chokes out, too loud and abrasive in the fragility of the night around them, but Sokka leans over, let’s his shoulder and right side gently press against Zuko’s. “Everything hurts. And I just—when I’m with you that sometimes goes away. But it’s not. Not tonight.”

Zuko’s words are slightly slurred, the space between the open cap of the bottle and the line where the liquor starts suddenly much more stark to Sokka, who tries to push back the stabbing twist in his abdomen. 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko adds after a beat, and the tense and strained tone to his voice strikes out as he repeats the words over and over, and Sokka is hit with the reality that Zuko is real, and here, and hurting, and Sokka’s being ridiculous for harboring reservations based off of the fact that he’s afraid of Zuko dissipating around him—because he doesn’t have Zuko anyways, not really. But maybe he can, because Zuko came to him, and is still here and broken but alive, so Sokka turns and tugs Zuko hard and fast against his chest, winds one hand into his hair and the other to the space between his shoulder blades, and holds him there. 

And Zuko doesn’t shatter. He doesn’t crumble away into dust, an enigma forever more. Instead, he throws his arms around Sokka with the same ferocity and clings—holds on and doesn’t let go as if his life depends on it, and Sokka is plagued with the mightily harrowing thought that maybe it does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say I’m so sorry that this took quite a bit of time to come out, and that it’s short and feels incomplete. It’s almost 4am where I am right now (and I’m not proofreading this before uploading, so I’m very sorry for any mistakes), I’ve had an absolutely insane week and a half, and I just wanted to get this out to you guys. If updates are slow like this for a while, I’m adjusting to online school curriculum along with a whole platter of other bs—but this will always be my happy place.
> 
> Part of me is uploading this because I just needed to write something for this fic just to deal with all the shit going on irl, and part of me because I feel bad for leaving everyone on the line for so long. Either way, this is pretty angsty, but sets the pace for some future comfort to go along with the hurt.
> 
> On another note: I’m considering linking my tumblr with this fic in case anyone wanted to chat or anything—thoughts?
> 
> Thank you guys so, so much for all of the love on this fic. Seriously, writing this and having the experience that I have with actually posting it has been such a constant in my life that I really needed. Thanks for sticking around <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka and Zuko deal with the beginning of the repercussions of the aftermath of the night before. An ‘almost’ happens between them, and Zuko and Katara come to an understanding.

Sokka has a beautiful sleeping boy on his couch, a phone full of worried messages, an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his bag that needs to be disposed of, and a 20 ounce Red Bull sitting in front of him. The clock in the kitchen reads 6:43 am, and Sokka really, really needs to get his sleep schedule back in line before he collapses. 

Collapses like Zuko, who's so tired he hadn't even questioned promptly passing out the second they'd gotten back to Sokka's house, despite his regular inhibitions. It's not a restful sleep like that day in Zuko's lofty bedroom—Zuko's features are so drawn and upset, his body shifty and restless. Sokka's caught the tail ends of a few strained mumblings, but has long since given up watching him lest he break his heart over and over watching the scene unfold before him. 

So instead he sits at the kitchen table with the yellow buzzing light above him, one eye to the living room and Zuko and the other trained on a list of records written in a peeling Five Star. He runs a finger along them, casts one last long look at the picture he'd taken of the list in Zuko's room, before deleting it and focusing back on the notebook. 

Thinking about getting back Zuko's records is a much welcome distraction from thinking about said boy asleep in his living room, who'd conveyed nothing beyond the fact that he was hurting and had sought out Sokka, of all people, because he trusted him. Trusted him at least on some level, and yet not enough to shed light on the dark thoughts that Sokka knows plague the recesses of Zuko's mind he so aptly tries to shy away from. It'd be frustrating if it wasn't so overwhelmingly sad. 

"Sokka?"

Sokka jolts, feels the curled edge of the notebook strike his fingertips and winces. He looks over at his father, standing in the archway of the kitchen, and wonders briefly if he'll become accustomed to him being around again before he leaves once more. Pushes it down.

"Who's on our couch?" He asks, tone light and joking as he moves to fiddle with the coffee pot, and Sokka feels a jolt of momentary panic burst through him. Gran-Gran, accustomed to a full house and swinging door of kids not her own in and out is unbothered by the ever changing company. His father may not be, and Sokka has no way of knowing. Hadn't had the foresight to consider that. But more than anything, he just looks tired. 

"Oh—yeah, uhm, that's Zuko. He's kinda new to the group, you haven't met yet. He had a rough night. I wanted him to crash here, so I could keep an eye on him, I guess," Sokka answers inadequately, and Hakoda casts a glance back towards the couch, features drawing, before he looks back to Sokka. His eyes linger for a moment, and Sokka knows exactly where, but offers up no explanation at his father's questioning look. It's not like he even knows, anyways.

"A rough night?" He repeats, pouring out a cup of coffee and sliding into the chair next to Sokka. Sokka nods, once more runs his fingers over the divots of the ink pressed into the pages, and sighs. 

"Yeah. Family stuff, I think? I don't know exactly what," he says with a slight huff, and Hakoda quirks an eyebrow, seems to sense the sore spot, and graciously breezes on. He taps two fingers against the top corner of the notebook, and Sokka looks up at him, watches as he cranes his neck slightly to get a look at it. He furrows his eyebrows as his eyes flicker across the lines of Sokka's scratchy scrawl. 

"Deep Purple, Zeppelin, The Cult—Sokka, did I miss out on your classic rock phase?" 

Sokka shoves at his arm lightly, and his dad makes an affronted noise. Simultaneously, the two of them peer back into the dark living room at the (thankfully) still sleeping form of Zuko. Sokka wishes he was awake, and selfishly wishes he were feeling better so that they could meet, but is just as grateful that for the time being Zuko has settled into a much needed still and quiet rest. And is it too early for Sokka to introduce his estranged father and somehow equally estranged crush to one another—neither of whom are aware of the other's status?

"They're Zuko's." He nods to the living room. His dad tenses slightly, frowns. "Well, ones he lost. I think that something bad happened to them before he moved here. But I wanted to try and find them. for him," he explains, and his dad is quiet beside him, still and contemplative in a way that makes Sokka nervous. Because Katara is their mother's daughter through and through, but Sokka is his father's son, and he and his dad have always harbored the same spray and pray mentality. Silence between them feels more significant than Sokka wants it to, but reasons that maybe shying away from that tenseness is what has left him in the dark for so long. With his dad and Zuko. "It seemed important, even if it doesn't sound like it. I thought maybe getting them back could—I don't know," he says, even though he definitely does know that he hopes to provide Zuko with some sort of closure on that chapter of his life he's so adverse to. Sokka has his suspicions. He doesn't dare voice them, and is maybe, in part, afraid of them. 

"This is really," his father starts, before abruptly stopping and clearing his throat. Trying again. "He's really important to you, huh?" He amends, and Sokka understands the implications of those words the second they hang in the air between them. 

Sokka freezes, feels his fingers curl around the pages so hard that in their already frail state they're on the edge, and meets his dad's gaze. There's no smirk. No tease to his tone of mirth in his eyes. For once, it seems, both of them are deadly serious. 

"Yeah. He really is," he says just as serious, and watches in blinding confusion as his father's face crumbles slightly, descending into an expression Sokka so rarely sees—one he knows only to come from mention of his mother. And as of today situations like this, apparently. "I like him, dad. A lot," he adds for clarification, even though it's really not necessary. 

His father doesn't do a very good job of quelling down that distinctly melancholy look in his eyes, but a small smile eventually graces his lips regardless, and Sokka feels that monster gnawing at his insides dissipate at the gesture. It's okay, he thinks to himself, because of course it is—but it doesn't mean that his dad doesn't also mean the world to him regardless of the ever present distance between them, and causing a rift further between them would eviscerate him. 

"Well, maybe at the very least he can turn you onto some better music."

Sokka laughs. It bursts through him almost desperately, a strike of light through the heaviness plaguing the shadows of the half lit kitchen, and it's likely a bit too loud to taking Zuko into account, but he quells it down and shoves at his dad regardless. Eventually, he rises and tells Sokka he'll be at the shop helping Gran-Gran balance books for the day, and just like that Sokka is alone with his thoughts once more.

Someone knows, now. He's fledged out that he likes Zuko to another person—beyond his friends admittedly correct assumptions—and that feels mildly terrifying. He can't imagine how it would feel to tell Zuko—and yet he somehow longs to do so with his whole being. 

~

When he wakes up, he's not sure what had been building up in his subconscious, but feels lucky that he'd jolted out of it before he had to find out. 

His chest rises heavily, falls, and he's alive, somehow, even if his mom is not. 366 days, he tallies internally. And the world keeps spinning, and the sun rises as it has everyday for the past year without her, regardless of how much it feels like the sun would much rather swallow him whole some days. 

Somewhere across the city, Azula wakes up motherless and alone in a cold house with a colder man looming over her, and puts on the same brave face Zuko did for years. In another direction up the coast, a four year old girl wakes up motherless in a warm apartment with a doting father spoiling her rotten in her mother's name, smiling and blissfully unaware of the significance the precious day harbored for them all. Zuko wakes up disoriented, head throbbing and in a place definitely not his own. 

He sits up, feels a familiarly soft blanket slip off of his shoulders and runs his fingers across a distinctly worn feeling couch and exhales deeply as the smell of coffee blissfully hits him. 

He remembers a poorly stashed bottle of Jack now empty, of his eyes burning with unshed tears, and of—of Sokka, stable and grounding, arms around him and closer than he let even Uncle get throughout everything. Sokka, meeting Zuko in the middle of the night because of a halfhearted drunk text he never would've made uninhibited, and yet is in hindsight so glad he didn't have the reservation to hold back from. Guilt pools in his gut at the thought of whatever bullshit he inflicted on Sokka last night, and yet gratitude blooms warm and expansive and consuming, and he wants to cry all over again for completely different reasons. 

Sokka who doesn't know anything, and yet was there regardless. Sokka, who held him while he completely lost his shit. Sokka, who Zuko is maybe more than a little in love with. 

Sokka, who is perched on the coffee table in front of Zuko, grinning and wafting the steam off of a cup of coffee towards Zuko. 

"Morning, sleepyhead. Feeling that hangover yet?"

Just like that, guilt eclipses his gratitude and Zuko wants to kick himself for dragging Sokka into everything. 

"Shit, Sokka, I'm so—"

"Nope," Sokka swiftly interject, and pushes the cup into his hands. It's warmth spreads through Zuko's fingertips, and he brings it up towards his face just to feel that similar warmth there, too. "If I hear one 'I'm sorry' out of you today, I'm kicking your ass."

Zuko blinks up at him, at his steely blue eyes unwavering and serious, and god, Zuko just wants to kiss him. Wants to show him the way he feels where his lack of words consistently fails him. 

"I mean, you could probably lay me out, but I'd put up a valiant effort, regardless. But anyways—are you feeling any better today?" 

Zuko sits stock still for a moment, feels his brain whir and click trying to catch up with the whiplash that Sokka's words are giving him, and eventually gives up. Focuses on what he can, focuses on answering Sokka's questions, and focuses on something new—on working himself up to try to give him actual answers. 

"I'll be okay. If not I'm sorry," Sokka tilts his chin up and raises his eyebrows, an extremely exaggerated 'tough' look overtaking his features that makes Zuko huff out a startling laugh. He clears his throat and tries to move on. "Then thank you," he says, and it feels so unnatural intentionally tiptoeing around apologies and reconciliation and instead pushing onward towards the next part of this whole process, which is knowingly more personal and difficult—the aftermath. 

"Zuko, I'm—" Sokka sighs, and Zuko wishes he wasn't so fucking fragile that such deliberateness is needed in moments like this, and that events like last night repeatedly transpire because a year of therapy still hadn't taught him how to take things as they come instead of letting them all build up and then just—implode. "I'm here for you, you know that right? And I'm always gonna be, as long as you let me, and I'm not asking—no obligation, or anything—but if you want to talk about it—any of it—I'm here for you, okay?"

"You should be asking," is his knee jerk reaction, because somehow fixating on that piece of the conversation is easier than acknowledging the admittedly strong feelings that the rest of it evokes. Sokka opens his mouth to speak, but Zuko beats him to it. "It's not fair. I—I don't get to just do that to you, and expect you to just be there while acting like a prick the whole way through it—"

"Zuko, stop," Sokka interjects, and he has so much more he wants to say, now that he's able to speak, but something about the look in Sokka's eyes makes him stop. Sokka's eyes are so, so blue, and the irony of them looking just like the ocean waves he's so in his element in is not lost on Zuko. Just as beautiful, and just as dangerous for Zuko. 

"Jesus, you're so much harder on yourself than everyone around you is, you know that, right? You're allowed to have that privacy and still come to me—I'm not asking for information in..in exchange for my support. It doesn't work like that, man. The only reason—and I mean this, Zuko—the only reason I wish I knew everything is so that I could better be there for you. And even then, I-I wish that I could just know, and spare you having to go through telling me, because it's like there's this huge piece of who you are that you don't even want to acknowledge, and I hate the idea of making you go through reliving that just for my sake—"

"You don't want to know that person," Zuko interrupts, and this feels like an argument, which is something that he doesn't have the resolve with in him to commit to but—Sokka's not angry. He's not combative, or even that expressive. He's almost determinedly calm and collected, and Zuko doesn't know what to do with that patience. He hasn't had to have this kind of conversation with anyone, because the only person he would ever need to has been Iroh, who knows Zuko deep down better than he knows himself, most of the time. "The person I was before all of this," Zuko waves a hand around his face, is acutely award of the dark shape being the only thing that passes across his line of sight when he moves across his left side. "You don't want to know him. And I try so hard to forget all of it, that in the process parts of who I'm trying to be now get caught up in that and I just—well, last night."

"I do," Sokka says earnestly, and he leans forward and close enough that Zuko can trace the sun stained freckles across the bridge of his nose, of the near imperceptible scar thin and stark against his dark skin cutting through his eyebrow—can see all of him, just as Sokka can do the same. "Because regardless of what you think, I'm not about to high tail out of here because of some shitty choices made in a desperate situation. That guy you talk about—he's you, Zuko, and that's not something that me—or any one of us, for that matter—is asking you to conceal or compensate for. I mean, Jesus Christ, you've got to know that you're one of my favorite people in the whole fucking world, and there is very—and I mean very, very—little that you could do at this point to change that."

Sokka breathes heavy and regains himself as Zuko stares, feels his own breath halt and start and the fear and desperation at being known so wholly claw at his ribs, screaming to be let out, to let Sokka take its place and let him warp around the mottled and broken pieces of himself that he hates so fiercely. And he should be afraid, terrified, by all predetermined rules, but instead he's just acutely upset that he hasn't bestowed the trust he feels in Sokka right now from the moment they first met. Wish he'd had the foresight to, and wonders where they'd be if he had. 

Sokka stares, breathing leveling and matching Zuko's, eyes darting down to his lips, and Zuko doesn't even actively think to lean, in it just happens, letting go and letting the wave of trust and understanding ride itself out as Sokka does the same—

"Zuko?" 

Zuko startles more abruptly than he's proud of at the sound of Katara's voice striking through the thin veil of privacy Zuko had previously bestowed his trust in. Sokka jerks backwards, eyes wide and breaths suddenly quick and laborious, and he collects himself and scoots backwards further, eyes glued to Katara. Zuko knows he should look over, should at least acknowledge Katara as she has him, but his head is spinning and he can't focus on anything except the fact that Sokka almost just kissed him, and then backed away like he'd been stung. 

"Morning, Tara," Sokka finally says, which jolts Zuko out of his state and he looks over to her, leaned against the bottom bannister of the step looking sleep rumpled and still half in bed.

"Hey, Katara," Zuko adds, but the words feel warbled and strange in their simplicity after the omission that was his last words. She tilts her head, eyes raking him over, and Zuko feels scrutinized under those eyes, icy blue and startlingly bright where Sokka's are smoothed out and gentle like the water. Her features soften, and she hesitantly sits on the end of the couch across from Zuko.

"What's going on?" She asks, but her eyes stay trained on Zuko, worry and apprehension pooling in the place of normal mistrust. He almost misses it, because at least then he knows where he stands. "Are you guys okay?"

"Katara—" Sokka starts to reprimand, but Zuko shoots him a look and swiftly interjects. 

"I was showing Sokka some skating stuff last night. It got pretty late, so I decided to just stay here. We're good," he says, and Katara's not stupid, doesn't seem to buy it at all, but at least decides to let it go after one last long glance at Zuko. She turns to Sokka.

"Are we meeting up with Aang and Suki this morning?" She asks, and Zuko relaxes back into the couch, revels in momentarily not being the conversational focal point, before Sokka's looking at him again, a question written all over his features, and all Zuko can do is nod. Sokka turns back to Katara. 

"Go get ready," he says with a nod, and Katara gives him a small smile, takes a drink of his abandoned coffee cup on the table, and turns right back up the stairs. And what is there to say now, which so much hanging between them it's overwhelming—what would have happened if Sokka's little sister hadn't chosen that moment to come downstairs? Where would they be now? Does Zuko really want to know in practice instead of the bliss that is theory?

"Sure you're okay to go?" Sokka asks, still feeling so, so far away now that he's been so close. He doesn't shy away like Zuko feels he has to force himself not to, instead just looking concerned and worried and-and guilty? "I can drop you back off at the shop, and we can meet up later or something, if you want—"

"It's okay," he says, before Sokka can wind himself up so much. He uncurls himself on the couch, stretches out sore muscles and cracking bones and takes a deep breath. Feels desperate to prove to everyone he's okay—actually, genuinely feels it for once. Not good, far from it, but better. "I wanna see everyone. I..I was kind of an asshole." 

Sokka frowns, looks like he's about to say something to the contrary, before Katara comes back downstairs with a bag strung across her shoulder and a wetsuit on the lower half of her body. Sokka remains still for a moment, still looking at Zuko, who worries for a split second that Sokka's about to disregard her presence and push onward anyways, but he doesn't. He rises from his spot, stretches his arms up towards the ceiling and cracks his back languidly, and offers a hand to Zuko. 

Zuko lets himself be pulled up from the couch, let's a warm hand stay secure around his elbow, let's the pad of a gentle thumb run across the top part of his forearm and represses a shiver as Sokka lets go, either unaware or uncaring of the feeling that actions has just evoked from Zuko. He calls for Appa, who bounds into the living room from somewhere in the house and grabs his keys from the bowl by the front door. Zuko follows wordlessly as Katara seems to grow uneasy with their quiet and asks Sokka something about the shop that he doesn't catch because his mind is still stuck back a year ago, a day ago, twenty minutes ago, two minutes ago—things just keep happening and he can't keep up.

Appa snuggles up next to him in the back of Sokka's Vanagon, and Zuko let's the sounds of a rumbling exhaust meld with the tinny speakers blaring Katara's top 100's, and tips his head back against the open back window. Rests his neck on the thin trunk door and let's the wind blow his hair crazy and the sun warm his heart running cold. 

~

The ocean's rough today.

Zuko watches as she churns white and unrelenting, pulling them into the currents and spitting them back out, all the while they laugh and smile and try again and again. He props himself up against one of Suki's boards dug deep into the sand, runs his fingers across Appa's soft fur, and watches, thankful he's not out there being trashed and drug by the waves. 

He tips his head back against the worn wood and closes his eyes, feels a momentary overcast break and give way to the warming sun, and feels a weeks worth of bullshit rolling off of him in waves, all starting and ending with the shining boy coasting out a monster of a ripper.

The sand rustles beside him, the beams of sunlight fading away, and Zuko peels an eye open. 

Katara sits beside him, wetsuit tugged off and tossed beside her, wearing a loose 5K shirt that Zuko knows belongs to Aang, her knees pulled up to her chest and her eyes trained out at the ocean. It makes him uneasy, because out of everyone he knows Katara the least and she dislikes him the most. 

"Can I ask you something?" She says, voice sounding guarded and reserved, but Zuko's not so prideful he won't admit that he wishes she liked him, if nothing else but for the sake of their friend group, so he nods and settles into the sand. "Are—are you still friends with him?" The word 'him' slips off her tongue venomously, features drawing and lips curling bitterly. Zuko swallows, and waits for her to continue, mind spinning and reeling over who the 'him' that so displeases her could be. 

"Who?" He finally asks when enough time passes that she makes it clear she isn't going to elaborate, and her gaze snaps over to him, and she looks at him like he should already know—and maybe he should, but the bottom line is he doesn't. Katara's features soften imperceptibly. 

"Jet," she says simply, and the name makes Zuko's blood run cold.

Because for one—how does she know that Jet was (god, can you even call them friends?) friends with Zuko, long before he was ever in Venice Beach and had met any one of them and two—how does she know Jet as well as the distaste imminent in her voice discloses? 

"I just—I know that I've been kind of a bitch," and it's a bad time to note, but hearing Katara swear is almost as disorienting as hearing Aang swear. Which is unimportant and insignificant in the context of this conversation—but noteworthy all the same. "But Jet and I—we have history. And trust me when I tell you that no one in the group is going to be too happy about you two being close—"

"We're not," Zuko interjects, and his heart feels like it's racing so fast that it's about to fucking explode, but if Katara presumedly lumps him in with Jet one more time it's not just his heart that's going to explode. "Not at fucking all," he huffs, slumping back against the board and already fucking hating this conversation. Katara deflates slightly, hand suspended in mid-air and mouth still ajar. "Wait, how do you know Jet?" Because Zuko wouldn't put it past Jet to creep on a 16 year old girl, but Katara also doesn't seem like the type to run with a bunch of assholes like Jet's crew. 

"I met him at a swim meet during freshman year. He had me convinced he gave a shit about me but—well, there's a reason that Sokka's got that scar on his back," Katara says with a huff, and Zuko narrows his eyes, casts a futile glance towards the ocean and Sokka as if he'll be able to see it from here, and looks back as Katara continues talking. "He pushed me at a party one night and was stupid enough to do it in front of Sokka, and they went at it. Didn't end well, but at least Jet mostly stays out of Venice now. It's kinda funny to think about someone being afraid of Sokka," she nods out at the water where Sokka has Suki thrown over his shoulders and Aang in a chokehold, all three of them trying to stay upright in the sea, "but it really didn't end well."

And there's something almost comforting about having someone else in the world with the same—at least on some level—experience as him, to have a haven where Jet is not welcome, and where Sokka is the one defending it. Almost, if everything regarding his history with Jet being exposed rides on what Katara does or doesn't know. 

“Anyways, it doesn’t matter. Ancient history know,” she says with a wave of her hand like it’s that simple, and Zuko is perhaps the only one who knows that it’s really not. “But I saw you. Last year, at a party that I wasn’t even supposed to be at—and when we met you just—you didn’t know me. And so I thought that maybe we were just gonna go past it, but it’s still been driving me crazy and I just—“

“Katara, listen.” Zuko breathes deeply, digs his toes further into the sand and his hands further into Appa’s fur, and meets Katara’s eyes. “What me and Jet had—it’s over. It’s been over for a while, okay? And I’m-I’m really sorry, if I said anything to you, or did anything at that party, because I was a real asshole back then, but—“

“You didn’t,” she interrupts quickly, straightening slightly as her eyes widen. “You didn’t do anything, I just—remembered you,” she says as a whisper, and her eyes linger on his scar a moment too long, and Zuko wishes he could be anywhere but here. “But it was before—well before all of that. And I’m sorry if I’ve been mean to you, but just—trust me when I say that we all have good reason to be wary of Jet and his friends. Sokka and I in particular.” 

“I understand,” Zuko says immediately, and Katara nods, pushes her fingers over the light sand and Zuko watches as it threads between her dark fingers. It feels like a relief to know that she doesn’t just hate him without warrant, but it’s somehow worse to think that this whole time she’d been under the impression that he’d been slumming with Jet still—regardless, she knows the truth now, and has the power here. Zuko can only pray that she doesn’t tell Sokka about their mutual crazy ex-boyfriend. 

“Well, if nothing else at least we have common ground in shitty taste in men,” Zuko says just for everything to stop being so quiet, and, surprisingly, Katara huffs a laugh and grins over at him, her eyes calm and gentle and so, so different from Sokka’s but at least not so sharp and scrutinizing anymore. 

“Used to have the same taste,” she says, wrinkling her nose and looking out at Sokka, still wrestling Aang on the sandbank. Zuko looks too, feels his heart tug as Suki bounds between them and pushes Aang into the water as her and Sokka gang up on him, surfboards abandoned a few feet inland. Katara knowing should be terrifying. After the conversation that they’re just had, it feels a whole lot safer. “Maybe-maybe don’t tell Sokka about Jet. Not that he’d be mad at you, but still..”

“Bad memories. I get it. I won’t,” he says with a nod, and Katara smiles once more, wider and softer and it’s the most Sokka-like she’s looked in the whole time Zuko’s known her, and she leans against his side, head falling to his shoulder. Zuko leans back, let’s the sound of the waves hitting the shore and their friends shouting lull him just as Katara’s rhythmic breath and Appa’s soft fur does the same. 

Things are okay, for the time being—and that’s more than Zuko’s ever even been foolish enough to believe was possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pls don’t hate me for having Katara cockblock—the kiss will come n it will be lovely but for now we gotta pine we just GOTTA
> 
> Katara and Zuko weren’t supposed to have a conversation about Jet until *checks outline* about 3 chapters from now but hey I honestly wanted to get a move on with some plot devices because like,,I really haven’t done anything substantial for a few chapters and feel bad about it honestly.
> 
> Unrelated, but if you haven’t checked in on it in a bit the playlist for this fic has been updated a TON and has a lot of songs that pertain to the aspects of this story now like Zuko’s missing records and songs they all listen to as well as ones that I was vibing with.
> 
> Between school stress and writing this, I’ve been rewatching TLOK while I work on my castle in Minecraft (a good use of my time, I know), and I have a lot of different feelings—seque, but if anyone wants to talk about TLOK or ATLA or this fic or any other of my billion and one interests: message me on Tumblr!! :) http://p3nnyl4ne.tumblr.com/
> 
> Again, it goes without saying that your support and feedback makes me insurmountably happy, and I love you all so much. Thanks for being freaking awesome <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka has a very important and very decisive conversation with his father. Zuko briefly reflects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written at 2 am, and currently I’m about three more school assignments from inquiring with a medical professional the logistics of a Red Bull IV. Clearly, this bleeds through with this chapter. :)

Sokka lies in the rough grass of a trodden backyard and stares up at the sky. 

The sky is pale blue, clouds wispy and feathery before him, and somewhere closer to the coast it's thinking orange and giving way to the pinks and purples of the sunset. But for now, far enough away that the waves are hardly even a distant ache in his heart, the night is young and soft, blended out like some kind of Bob Ross painting, and Sokka feels slightly fuzzy all over. Appa plops down next to him in a mass of white fur and nudges against his hand, and Sokka focuses on the feeling of his fur beside him, of the blades of grass tickling the back of his neck, an ant or something crawling over his ankle, the evening breeze fanning across his face. 

Sokka's hard-set in his views—in science, and logic, and practicality—bit this is maybe as close to that enlightenment he's heard Aang so aptly speaking of in correlation to meditation, and yoga, and whatever other hippie shit he's been trying to coerce Sokka to dip his toes into. From a distance, it's admirable, and Sokka's not so huge a close-minded asshole he can't accept that it's helped Aang through punch after punch that life has thrown at him, but still. Meditation and Sokka don't go together, yet regardless there's an understated magic in the air tonight that Sokka won't entertain is spiritual. Spirituality hits too close to religion for Sokka. Aang would have other thoughts. Katara would be caught in the middle.

He hears the back screen door creak open and peels an eye he hadn't realized had closed open against the soft sky, sits up on his elbows and feels the grass dig into the skin there. He frowns, feels whatever halfhearted peace or 'enlightenment' give way at the sight of his dad in the doorframe. 

He wishes times were simple again, where his dad's presence in his life made his naive mind strive for approval time and time again rather than questioning things so much. He can't say what's changed, exactly, but his dad removing himself from the one real conversation that they've had in years the other morning left a bad taste in his mouth. He's not angry, but he just doesn't understand. Not knowing how to be there for the people he cares about has got to be the most aggravating thing in the world to him—and his father and Zuko are cut from the same cloth in that regard. He loves his dad, and Zuko, too, but it's hard. Always will be. 

"Hey, dad," he breathes out testily, but doesn't make any motion to head his way as Appa does in one graceless bound. He knocks him in the knees, and his dad wavers a bit before grinning down at him and ruffling the spot between his ears. Sokka smiles and sits up fully. 

"Were you..sleeping?" He asks with tasteful trepidation, and Sokka shakes his head, feels the parts of his hair somehow still tied back give way and brush across the top of his shoulders, blades of grass and somehow still—always, without fail—sand tumble down his bare torso. Sokka huffs a laugh—because he doesn't know how to explain exactly why he was lying in the middle of the yard at 7 o'clock on Tuesday night, but moreover his father feeling hesitance upon waking him in such a spot is amusing. 

"Meditating," he lies easily, grinning so his dad can catch onto this fact. "Trying something new," he adds, and relief washes over him when Hakoda catches on and his own laugh bursts forth. 

"Right," he drawls, rolling his eyes as he props himself up against the porch post. "Sorry to interrupt. You got a minute, Ghandi? I wanna show you something." 

The phrasing is peculiar enough that Sokka immediately hops to his feet and brushes himself free of debris, tugging his abandoned tank top back over his head as his dad wordlessly turns back into the house. He looks to Appa for guidance, who wisely stares back at him with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He keeps his eyes trained to his dad's back as he follows him back towards the front of the house, up the stairs and onto the landing until—Appa nudges at his hand to keep moving as his dad ascends that attic latter that's been pulled down. A sight Sokka hasn't seen since Gran Gran had commissioned Katara and him to help her move storage boxes up and down the stairs last summer. 

His dad offers no explanation, just goes up and what is Sokka supposed to do except follow? What the fuck is in the attic that his estranged father deems worthy enough to fledge into their rocky relationship?

It's still as musty and dusty feeling as it was the last time Sokka was up here, about 20 degrees hotter and with no moving air whatsoever. The light hanging from the center rafter is yellow and blinks a few times before settling into a low buzz, and the rafters themselves are low enough his father has to crane down slightly. He frowns, follows over to the small port window along the back side of the house where his dad is, narrows his eyes at the unassuming cardboard boxes and promptly flings himself down onto the dusty floor in front of them. More carefully, his father lowers himself, too, and when he peels back the lid of the first box, Sokka's heart drops to his feet momentarily. 

At 17, pushing 10 years after the fact, Sokka's memories of his mother lie in the things around him. 

They're a big blue surfboard above his bed, and a puka necklace around his sister's neck. The feeling her hugs evoked in him instead of the physicality of them, the faded scars she'd tended to on his legs and torso the summer his dad first taught him to surf—sometimes when he watches Katara patch them up after a particularly rough morning, or one of Suki's derby matches, or the days last summer after his final blowout with Jet, all he can see is his mom. Which is weird, because if not for the few pictures in the background of his day to day, Sokka's not sure he'd even remember what she looks like. There would be glimpses, maybe, but even looking at pictures now feels achingly harrowing, looking at a stranger that he knows it's wrong to forget so easily. 

His memories are etched into his surroundings, and more acutely now the wedding ring still shining on his father's finger and the boxes of records that she'd bought for him between them. Sokka thinks back to Zuko's collection, of giving him pieces of the story that he'd never really told anyone about the very parts before him—he blinks away the blurriness at his vision. 

Sure, they've been up here all this time, but Sokka doesn't really go up here, and if he does he explicitly doesn't mess with anything to do with his mom or dad. It's different seeing slanted loopy writing in his peripherals, of knowing the contents of the boxes and not actively seeing it versus having it unassumingly thrust upon him. And for what reason?

His dad's made it clear that he doesn't want to talk about his late-wife, and maybe when there was a time that Sokka had wanted—needed—to, he'd pushed it away in favor of playing tough and putting on a brace face. He's learned since then, surely, but still. 

He doesn't push it all down like his dad, out of sight and out of mind, but he isn't as capable of talking about it as Katara is. His dad hasn't processed his grief—not from the outside looking in, at least—and Katara's so aptly on top of her shit most of the time it's intimidating—so Sokka's in limbo. Somewhere in between caring too much and caring too little, resting on the precipice of becoming his father or having a full scale meltdown. Neither feels to satiable, but the tightrope he's toeing is becoming increasing frail with every misplaced step he takes.

Sokka's all too familiar with riptides. Familiar enough that he knows he desperately doesn't want to be caught in the ones of his own mind.

Sokka wants to reach forward and slam the lid closed on that box, wants to shove it back up against the wall and not even think about it for another few years—but it's his dad. And whatever naive and young part of Sokka he thought was long gone maybe hasn't been completely quelled, because he distantly wonders if this—whatever it is—is something that the two of them need. 

Sokka's sick of searching for the lost piece of the equation, and would rather spend whatever time left that his dad is going to stay building something lasting rather than placating and pretending they have any semblance of a normal relationship. 

"I—I don't know if this is overstepping," he says, and Sokka can't help but think that he wishes he would overstep. That he would push too far like is expected instead of nothing at all. "But the other morning—wait, no. First of all, I handled that really poorly, and wanted to apologize for walking out so suddenly—"

"It's fine," he says out of instinct, even though he wants to bite it back the second it crawls out. Hakoda barely blinks, if anything looks more hard-set and determined. 

"It's not. And I just wanted to explain. If—if you'll hear me out?"

"Yeah, dad. Of course," he says, and this time doesn't regret a word as he slumps back against the wall and relaxes slightly. 

"Look, Sokka—I-I know I've hardly been a perfect parent. I don't want to make excuses, because bottom line is that I'm the adult here, and because I haven't been acting like it, you and your sister have had to suffer for it. I've done a lot of thinking these past few years, and I've realized that my biggest regret has been missing everything going on with you guys."

And this—this is great to hear, really, but it doesn't explain why Sokka's sitting in a musty attic with his eyes on the physical representation of everything his dad has spent his time shying away from.

"I'm staying this time. For good." Sokka's eyes snap away from the records, a million questions racing in his mind, but his dad holds up a hand. "I don't want you to worry about anything. Everything is gonna be okay—more than okay, I think, but anyways," his dad shakes his head as if he hasn't just dropped the biggest bomb on Sokka.

"Did you know that I had just turned 17 when I first met your mom?" Sokka stills. "We met on the boardwalk. You know all this, your grandma's given you the whole 'summer of love' spiel loads of times, I'm sure, but just—hearing you talk about that boy. I know that tone, Sokka. I know that look in your eyes, and that fire in your heart—and I just saw everything in you that I had once upon a time, too. And I was scared for you, Sokka."

"Scared?" Because out of everything, for some reason Sokka's only able to latch onto a few words at a time. 

"You love him, don't you?" 

"I do," he breathes out, and he can't fathom how he's able to so surely know anything with all the new information overloading his brain, but here he is regardless—professing his love for a boy he's not even sure he really knows to a man he definitely doesn't really know, all the while trying to wrap his head around his dad's newfound purpose in life. "But-but I'm not scared, dad. I know that losing mom the way that you did is one of the worst things a person can go through, and I'll never try to refute that or understand how horrible it was for you, but I also can't just not fall in love with—with this amazing person because of the possibility of one day losing them." 

"Sokka, hey, that's not what I'm saying," his dad holds up his hands, and Sokka feels where his nails dug into his palm and frowns, feels his chest heave and doesn't even really feel in control of his own body anymore. "Losing your mother—it was the worst pain that anyone can know. But I didn't lose you and Katara, but then because of how everything played out I kind of did, anyways."

"You didn't," Sokka interjects futilely, but his dad just stares his down, steely and grounding and so much like Katara it's blinding, and continues on. 

"I bolted because I never want you to go through that kind of pain. That morning I heard the pain in your voice, and saw it in your eyes, and was blinded by my own feelings. And I made a mistake, and I'm sorry."

Sokka didn't need an apology—but God, does an explanation feel like such a sweet release. Therapy, Sokka thinks, must positively work wonders. 

"When you told me about your search, I thought about your mom's. About how much it meant to be, and about how what you're trying to do for Zuko is going to mean to him—whatever kind of poetic bullshit is layered in that." Sokka chokes out a wet laugh as his father does the same, and he looks back up at him as the new reds of the sky bleed through the small window and illuminate the space between them. 

Sokka looks down at his mom and dad's shared collection, and it all makes sense.

"Dad, I couldn't take these—"

"Yes, you can. What good are they doing collecting dust up here for years? Sokka," his dad claps a hand over his shoulder, and Sokka leans into, forward and closer into that warmth. "Being 17 and hopelessly in love is so, so important. And you shouldn't be afraid, regardless of what my knee-jerk reaction was. You shouldn't be afraid, because you have me, and your sister, and your crazy friends—and you and Zuko have each other, so enjoy it. Find those records, and take it from there." 

Sokka lunges forward and throws his arms around his dad's shoulders, exhales deeply into his father's shirt and breathes back in the smell of the dusty attic mixing with his cologne. Life is so, so strange right now, but his dad's right—he's far from alone, and regardless of what's to come, he likely won't ever be.

~

Across town, Zuko perches on a rickety fire escape, lights a stick of incense instead of a cigarette, and stares up at the same bleeding sky.

He thinks of sophomore year, of a bruised and wrought body whose inflicted pain was indistinguishable between the hands of his father or his so called 'boyfriend'. Bruises from hands too big and strong to bear down on a kid, and said kid being too convoluted for to have any clue it was wrong. 

He thinks of the mistakes he's made, of the people he's hurt and the literal and metaphorical fires that he's walked through to wind up where he is now, and wonders not for the first time if he's undeserving. He's paid the price for mistakes, but had lost an eye and nearly an ear for the price of simply being who he was to the man by all natural laws designated to take care of him. 

He thinks of a court case meant for his father's imprisonment, and a testimony from his sister in his favor—a bridge permanently burned between them as he'd watched, still bandaged and terrified, as his father walked out of that courtroom unscathed and into the flashing lights of the awaiting paparazzi with a smug smile and a pep to his stride. 

Instead of heavy bearing hands, he imagines Sokka's, ever light and gentle, and unwaveringly cautious. Thinks of Aang stepping into a hole in his heart still bleeding out since Azula had ripped herself from it and making the edges of everything a little softer with every casual touch and unabashed smile. Of Katara, newly accepting and yet seamlessly sliding into her own spot at his side with relentless teasing about Sokka and a link to a Minecraft server in his phone. Suki and Toph, the first friends he'd made in his new life, and the toughest people that he knows, kindred spirits through and through. Mai and Ty Lee, still at his side despite the fact that by all rules they were supposed to take Azula's side in the fallout. 

The FM radio blares tinny and slightly staticky through his bedroom window. An old and familiarly haunting song makes its way out to him, and he texts out a three digit radio station to Sokka.

He tips his head back against the rough brick of an old building more at home to him in six months than 17 years had ever been nestled in Beverly Hill, and wonders if somewhere Sokka listens, too, and stares up at the same sky. 

Unbeknownst to Zuko, Sokka does as he sifts through the spines of rough records. Even apart, for a while they exist in the sound waves traveling between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh..hi??? Sorry for dropping off the radar for a week?? THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 5000 HITS WHAT THE FUCK?????????
> 
> Ahem. You guys are insane. I love you, this is monumental, please accept 3000 words of Sokka having daddy issues I wrote at 2 am and let me pass it off as a chapter. 
> 
> I’m sorry this is so lackluster and with such a wait—the original chapter I had that was TWICE this length and SO MUCH better all got deleted, but I figured I’d go ahead and post what I have for the time being just so I don’t feel like such a loserrrr
> 
> Things that I’ve accomplished this past week: applied ( and gotten accepted !!! ) into my school’s offered college level writing class, busted my ass countless times practicing backwards skating in my basement, driven myself absolutely insane trying to adjust to online school, and oh, yeah! Created two new playlists for Sokka and Zuko specifically. Both in the works and hardly finished or refined. But yeah, if you wanna listen...
> 
> Sokka’s: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3r7YbRuS0OJvrs0AHhuEbT?si=n_pHkReQQhqNzZYjsfGU1w  
> Zuko’s: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Jth8JgP6zJKWqsO4mDFqc?si=ImUNMZOOQdSmjHGlw1O0DA
> 
> Again: so sorry this is super lame. All I wanna do right now is write, but shit’s just been piling up lately and making that increasingly difficulty. I am going to try so, so hard to get out the next chapter a lot faster, and I can almost guarantee that (at least premise wise) it’s gonna be a lot more in line with this story and a lot more enjoyable. By that, I mean a lot more Sokka/Zuko centric.
> 
> To everyone out there reading this that’s in the same boat as me with school bs—take a deep breath, and know that I’m sending you the most bone crushing virtual hug right now.
> 
> Thank you crazy people for 5000 hits, I’m blown away, truly. As always, all of your comments and support is getting me through my days, and I hope that you enjoy the update and maybe even the new playlists! Until next time. <3
> 
> (PS: if you’re curious, the song that I had in mind for the very last snippet is Like a Stone by Audioslave—a very Zukka song with a great sound as well as perfect lyrics)


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of insight into Sokka’s youth. Zuko engages in some much needed teenage recklessness, and everyone loosens up and has some fun together.
> 
> Drunk Zuko is very soft, very open, and Sokka is very weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bato AND Kya within the first 1k words!!
> 
> The main character in this chapter? Teenage liberation. The secondary character? Mommy issues. It ain’t a gay coming of age story without a pool scene. Please enjoy xoxo
> 
> (It’s almost 3 am and I’m not proofreading have mercy I beg of you)

Sokka is six years old. In one hand a melting chocolate ice cream cone trails down his wrist, and in the other his mom's cool hand grips tight. 

The sun is high in the sky, bright and glistening across the ocean waves, and Sokka stares out as Katara babbles tirelessly on his mother's other side about swim lessons that morning. The pier is alive, filled to the brim with tourists and locals alike, and Sokka feels the familiarity settle in his chest as the word home resonates deep and encompassing in his brain. Sokka beams in breathes in the salt in the air as the pulls at his hair. Today is a good day.

Today, Sokka is getting his first 'big boy' surfboard. He's long since graduated since the tandem surfing Katara is currently at with their parents, and has now progressed far enough that his father wants to move him off of foamies—which Sokka doesn't fully understand, but his dad is ecstatic and his mom is supportive, so he's endlessly excited. 

They've been at the pier for a while now, and so many rounds of ski-ball and two funnel cakes later has exhausted Sokka's endlessly excited mind, and the minutes that tick by closer to his dad getting home from his work trip drag on. He's single-mindedly focused on tonight and the morning to come, and is wholly relieved when he sees his dad heading towards them, work clothes still stuffy and tight on him in ways that at such a young age Sokka knows is wrong and yet so used to by now he can't even question it. He pictures board shorts and flip flops instead of fancy jackets and slacks, and feels better when he throws his arms around his waist. 

His dad laughs as he lugs him up and spins, and it's only been a couple of days now since Sokka's seen him, but it feels like forever. 

He puts Sokka down again and tousles his hair, grinning as he crouches down better to his level, and Sokka feels so acutely award of how little he is, and wishes he could be big and tall like him, and tower over Katara and their friends. Katara let's go of their mom's hand and loops her small arms around the back of Hakoda's neck, and if all else fails, he'll at least always be bigger than her, Sokka thinks. 

"You ready, squirt?" His dad asks as he pulls Katara up onto his hip, and she rests her head in the crook of his neck, tired out from the day where Sokka feels nothing but unbridled excitement back in full force. He nods eagerly, and his dad lets out a small laugh, and shares a look with his mom. 

Sokka watches as she shakes her head but smiles all the same, leaning forward and placing a gentle kiss to his lips—Sokka groans loudly—and his father pulls away to tuck an escaped strand of her hair behind her ear. They're making gross love-y eyes at each other, and Sokka turns away to look back out at the waves lulling down to the sand. He never wants to be that oogie as an adult. 

His mom and dad start talking about boring adult stuff Sokka's accustomed to tuning out on the walk to the shop, so he kicks at a stray rock the whole way there as Katara keeps track of how many kicks it takes them to get there. He tries to pull her up onto his shoulders like he's seen dad do time and time again as they round the corner to the store, but stumbles on their way through the door. Katara laughs loud and crystal as they bump into the brick wall, and dad promptly lifts her from Sokka's shoulders and places her on his own without a break in his conversation with mom. 

Sokka frowns, affronted, before the site of the inside of the store lifts his mood and the interaction completely falls by the wayside.

The wall's are lined with boards of all shapes and sizes, each blooming with vibrant color and life, and Sokka is wonderstruck and in love with every one of them. He's seen their family boards, the ones sun faded and worn, but to see them so new and untarnished—it's almost a shame, when he thinks about it a bit. Not a single one has seen the ocean quite yet. 

Sokka's also smart enough to know that a lot of these aren't the kind of boards that he's seen his parents and their friends use—no, a lot of these are high end competition boards. Sokka runs his finger across one such board, laughs to himself as it emits a loud squeak that splits through the room, before casting a glance over his shoulder to where his dad's chatting easily—because he somehow seems to know everyone—with the big guy behind the counter. Sokka shoots a sheepish smile their way, but it's only his mother who catches his eye and shakes her head with a smile. 

"Sokka, look." Katara tugs at his sleeve, dragging him across the room and towards the counter. She points to the back wall with the hand not tugging his sleeve and frowning. "They're so small," she says as she stares up at what Sokka knows are skateboard decks, but she clearly doesn't. 

"They're the perfect size for you," he says, and she lets go of his sleeve to smack him on the arm. 

His dad calls him over and Sokka's snaps to attention, feels his feet carrying him away from Katara and over to the counter before he's even fully processed his surging excitement bursting through once more. The man behind the counter grins as Sokka pushes himself up onto the balls of his feet, resting his elbows on top of the glass case to hoist himself a bit taller. The adults laugh and Sokka doesn't really know why, but he feels something warm mingle with the raging excitement in his chest—he likes making people laugh. He can make his mom laugh when he pokes fun at his dad's adult talk, and when he makes funny faces Katara erupts into giggles when she's not mad at him for pushing too far. His dad's tougher to crack, but atop his shoulders or tucked into his side as Sokka babbles on in a way even he knows is aimless does the trick, his commentary ever flowing and shockingly acute for someone his age. He doesn't know the man behind the counter, but Sokka's come to associate the laughter from his parents with his best memories of them, so he figures the guy must be okay, despite how intimidating he is with his big tattoo clad arms. 

Sokka narrows his eyes and for the first time that night his surfboard slips his mind. He jabs a finger at the man's chest.

"He looks funny," Sokka says, pinpointing the little guy curled in on himself dangling down from the black cord around the man's neck. The pendant's carved from the same off white material his dad's is when he wears it, but he's got a smushed face that's long and rectangular, and his crouched body curls around a blue stone of some sort. He looks like one of those tiki guys he remembers from Disney Land last summer. 

The man huffs another laugh and loops his thumb around the back of it, brining it forward and closer to Sokka.

"His name's Tangaroa," the man says, and his voice curls around the name in a funny way. Sokka can't help the grimace in his face when he tries to repeat it and laughter erupts around him again. "He keeps the surf nice and gnarly for us, kid," he says, and Sokka narrows his eyes at the little token, wrinkles his nose, but knows it rude to say something to the contrary. He's read about the ocean. The moon causes the tides, not a little necklace. 

His mom pinches him on the elbow like she knows what he's thinking, and Sokka throws a look over his shoulder. It was her that taught him that anyways, why is she mad? She winks at him when she catches his eyes and turns his attention back to the counter. Sokka barely contains his smug smile. 

The man disappears into the back after a few more words with his dad, and when he returns, tucked under his arm is a sleek aqua surfboard, firm and streamlined and Sokka stands on his toes again to get closer as the man places it on the counter in front of him.

Sokka inhales sharply, breath lodging up in his throat because it's his board, and it's big and strong looking like his parents, but it belongs to him. It's never hit the water, never smacked against the boneyard. He'll be the first, and the thought makes him giddy. But it's so, so big, and when Sokka tries to tilt the side of it up for some kind of idea of exactly how big, he doesn't like the strain it puts there, and feels something new and corrosive crawling up his throat

Somehow, the adults are still talking, but Sokka can only stare at the blemish free board with wonder, before he finally reaches out again and runs a finger across the side. The finish is so, so glossy, and his finger leaves a streak across it that makes him smile. Katara nudges him in the side.

"Are you gonna be able to wait until tomorrow?" She asks with a smirk, and Sokka rolls his eyes and nudges her gently, even though he knows she's right. So much stands in between right now and the tidal break tomorrow, it feels insurmountable. 

When he makes it through dinner and bedtime routines hours later, he shuts out the light in his bedroom and waits until he hears the familiar footsteps of his mom and dad down the hallway retiring to bed for the night. He slips out of bed as quiet as possible, turning on the small light by his window and plopping down in front of the board propped against his wall. 

Excitement mingles with the apprehension boiling in his gut. His dad looked so excited, casting glances at Sokka the whole way home with a smile so bright it was nearly unfamiliar, but what if he can't do it? 

He nudges at the board with his finger, feels the weight and firmness in that one touch, and tries not to be scared. He's not scared. He knows how to surf. It's no different now, despite what his gut tells him.

It doesn't dissuade the feeling from remaining when his toes dig into the sand the next morning. 

He stares at the ocean, fatigue normally plaguing him replaced by curdling anxiety. His dad's to his left, Bato past him, and Sokka's never been afraid of all the adults out on the water before, never felt unknown in the water, but it all is just building up, now. What even is about to happen? Sokka doesn't like not knowing, not when so much feels like it's on the line. He looks over his shoulder at his mom and Katara, huddled together and barely awake up on the sand, and for the first time Sokka can recall he wishes that he didn't have to go out today. 

His dad claps a warm hand in his shoulder and he jumps, turns his gaze over to his grinning face, and watches as his and Bato's forms move forward to the water. He swallows, steels himself and holds his head high so that he doesn't look as scared as he feels, and hefts an unusually heavy board up under his shoulder. 

He falls. He falls hard, and fast, and panics, which makes it worse.

The board itself doesn't feel too explicitly different. It's more cutting, sharper in its movements and more responsive, but Sokka's already to tense by the time he's hoisted himself up. Katara's biggest learning curve surfing has been relaxing—Sokka's never had the same problem, has felt more at home on a surfboard than he has anywhere else, be it tucked safely beneath his parents legs or on his own foamie. It's never been a problem until now, apparently. 

He surfaces, winded and terrified, and lugs his board all the way back up to the bank, tosses it beside him, and wordlessly plops down next to his mom.

"I can't do it," is all he says when his mom opens her mouth to speak, and he knows he sounds petulant and a lot like little Katara right now, but he doesn't care. He looks out at the ocean, at how gentle and perfect the waves are today, and feels even worse. 

"Sokka," she says gently, and he doesn't look over, instead keeps his eyes trained out at Bato and his dad, laughing in the surf and pushing at one another playfully. "Sokka, look at me." She places a hand over his own, warm and soft and familiar, and squeezes. He looks over at her, at Katara slumped against her side and asleep, sand castle abandoned, and feels a bit of his resolve crumble. "You can—"

"It's too big. It feels so weird, and I don't wanna fall again and everyone will see and they'll-and they'll—"

"Sokka, look." His mom gently tilts his chin towards the horizon, where Bato catches a gentle wave and looses his footing, tumbling into the water with a bright smile on his face as his board slips from under him and catches the nose of his dad. He can't hear it over the pull and crash of the ocean, but he sees him yell something over at him, splashing water over at him as he surfaces but laughing all the same. "Everyone falls. Those two have been surfing since they were your age, and Bato just wiped out on nothing. Are you hurt?"

"..No."

"Could you be? Yes. But you're trying something new, Sokka. This is a big change, and it's okay to suck." Sokka can't help but giggle at his mom's informal language, which seems to have been her goal in the first place as she smiles and gently shifts to pull his hair back up into its ponytail. "No one—look at me—no one is going to be mad at you for not getting this on your first try, okay? I know you can do this, even if you don't believe it." 

She turns away momentarily, simultaneously shifting Katara's position against her so that she barely rustles in her sleep and digs through her beach bag a bit before pulling out a long wooden box. It's vaguely familiar, but Sokka doesn't exactly know where. 

"I was going to wait to give this to you once we were done for the day, but now is as good a time as any," she explains, before sliding open the box and revealing his dad's old pula necklace. Sokka recollects it from pictures of him as a baby, and the few pictures they have around the house and in old photo albums of his mom and dad in high school—the shells are off white and flecked with reds and ambers, and they're flattened to rest against the neck snugly. There's no charm like the one that his mom wears, but he knows that they're a matching set deep in his heart. 

She reaches around and clips it around his neck, and Sokka's fingers immediately reach up to tug on it gently. She smiles, soft and sad looking, before tugging down to strands of the hair she'd just pulled back. 

"Give it another shot," she says with a wink, and Sokka's not so sure, still feels wobbly on his knees when he rises, but he goes all the same, remembering his mother's words and pointedly keeping his eyes away from his dad and Bato. 

He falls again. He falls, and falls, and falls, and hits  
the water in blind frustration before falling again. 

The sun fully crests over the world, the water absolutely blinding in the glow as everything turns yellow and softer. He breathes deep, feels the sun warm his back through his wetsuit, and pushes up again. 

Pushes up, follows through, and does what he knows best. 

It feels good. Better almost than his old board, more sure under him despite the unfamiliarity. He doesn't take getting going for granted and keeps it simple, doesn't try anything fancy and abandons ship far earlier than he normally would, but when he resurfaces, he throws his hands in the air and grins, and without even realizing it his dad's thrown his arms around him and tossed him up, smiling so bright as Bato cheers and grabs his board for him where it's drifted. He casts a glance towards the beach at his mom with a smile brighter than the sun behind her.

~

Aang's chatting his ear off about the current web-comic he's obsessed with when Zuko spots a familiar silver truck pull up to the front of the Jasmine Dragon. It's about an hour until closing and as dead as can be, and Zuko's been halfheartedly wiping tables just for something to do and just hanging out with Aang for the past hour, anyways. 

So when he sees Ty Lee's pickup through the window with Mai in the passenger seat and Suki and Toph in the bed, he feels little remorse when he shoots Uncle a pleading look. He's dying to do something other than customer service, he misses his friends, and is in the mood for a little teenage freedom and irresponsibility. Unsurprisingly, uncle waves a hand in affirmation of his unasked question, and Aang hops off the counter enthusiastically and wordlessly follows Zuko to the back room. He grabs his bag, slings it over his shoulder, tosses a spare penny board at Aang, tucks an Alva board under his arm, and makes a run for the front door as Ty Lee starts laying on the horn as if they aren't already clearly on their way out.

"Care to join us, boys?" Suki calls as she drapes herself over the edge of the bed, smiling loosely and ruffling Zuko's hair once he gets within range. Aang narrowly avoids her affection and swiftly hops up into the bed, beaming and sticking his head through the open back window to greet Ty Lee and Mai. 

"What're you guys doing here?" Zuko asks instead of bothering to state the obvious, pulling himself up and in after Aang. Toph greets him with a nudge in the side as he settles next to her. Zuko nudges her back as Aang wiggles his way onto his other side. Mai lulls her head over her shoulder and shrugs, as Ty Lee does the same regardless of the fact that she's now pulling onto the road, fully beaming. 

"It's been too long!" She says, and Zuko definitely agrees, between his own bullshit and just life getting in the way, they haven't all been together since that night at the roller-rink. 

"My parents are out of town again," Suki says after watching after Ty Lee a beat more. Zuko raises an eyebrow and gives her a smug smile, and is swiftly met with a kick to his shin. "We're all gonna hang at mine for a while. And you don't have a choice."

"Pool party!" Ty Lee butts in from the front all enthusiasm and smiles, casting a look back at Suki before mercifully focusing back on the road. Aang cheers and shakes his fists towards the sky and Toph huffs beside him. Zuko takes a deep breath, focuses on the feeling of Toph pressed against his left side, Aang at his right; on the sound of the truck muffler just a bit too loud to be safe, and of the bright and warm reflections the low sun casts against the buildings down the strip. He's antsy and itching for some reprieve, and can feel a stupid idea already bouncing around as he takes in his surroundings. 

Traffic is low and the roads are pretty deserted for downtown, and—well, Zuko's been too on top of his general well-being lately, so he nudges forward the board tucked under his side and reaches across Aang to fiddle with the tailgate. 

"Uhm, what the fuck are you doing?" Toph asks as Suki seems to catch on and tries to push him away. Zuko grins as Aang swats her away and starts to encourage him, smacking his hand against Zuko's side in excitement as he gets it to pop open, and just as Ty Lee goes to make the turn onto the next street, he throws his board to the street and uses the momentum of the turn to swing him down to the ground. Ty Lee yells and Aang cheers.

His feet hit his board hard and fast, so he dives low as the wheels threaten to skid out from beneath him. He hits the same curve Ty Lee does close to the ground and fast, balancing out crouched close before pushing up and off. He looks up and the sun shines down the straightaway to the beach, and as he brings his hand up to shield it, he catches sight of Suki and Aang taking the same plunge after him. His heart hammers from the adrenaline of his leap of faith, but if he had to take a guess something else much stronger, too.

He smiles as Aang recovers from a near wipeout and turns to beam back at Zuko and Suki gets her footing on a longboard he's pretty sure belongs to Ty Lee. He speeds forward to meet up with Aang as Suki rounds around the front of the truck to exchange a few words with Ty Lee, and when Aang matches his pace next to him and holds up his hand for a high-five, Zuko happily obliges. 

Suki eases back up and finds her place on Zuko's right, coasting easily as Aang dips lower on his left to gain more speed. Zuko goes with Aang's method and pushes off, accelerating hard and fast as the truck takes another turn and heads—at least Zuko assumes—to meet up with them somewhere. 

A line of cars is pulled up to a red light up the road, and Zuko shoots a grin over his shoulder to Suki as they draw nearer, before rising back up and weaving in between the two lanes of traffic. He hasn't skated like this in over a year, and has no idea now is the time to revert back to being a public menace again, but it's exhilarating, driving hard and fast and dangerous like he knows he shouldn't. He hasn't felt so exhilarated since surfing with Sokka, and he hasn't been in his element then, here, he feels alive. 

He hears Aang laugh behind him and looks over the cars on right to see Suki taking the high road on the sidewalk, shaking her head as she watches them duck in between the lanes as a few stray horns go off around them, and Suki flips them off. 

And as they break out of the spot Zuko can't help it—he tips his head back and laughs up at the sky, feels rays of warmth flash across his exposed neck just as they explode in his chest. He feels the fast and rough concrete beneath him so clearly, and feels so steady and stable in so many ways that he hasn't in so long—and whether the stability in his gate or his mind is more monumental, he's not sure, but he doesn't question either, just smiles at the sun and tunes into the sounds around him, basking and soaking up the moments impermanence. 

~

When Sokka and Katara finally get to Suki's, the party seems to have started without them, and Sokka makes damn sure that everyone is aware of how distressing this is to him.

"Sokka, honey—there is no party without you," Ty Lee says placatingly as she passes him his first drink of the night, patting him on the shoulder as she turns and heads towards the back. Sokka stands in Suki's overly fancy kitchen, liquor too expensive and nice to be wasted on teenagers pulled from her parents liquor cabinets and all across the counters. He thinks of the aftermath of this, when her parents come home and find bottles half empty and gone, and if Suki will finally get the attention she's so desperately vying for every time this happens—every time they're gone—but Sokka's not hopeful. If that were the case, Suki's house wouldn't be the designated trap house.

Katara raises an eyebrow as Sokka takes a swig of whisky that's probably older than him, an Ice held lightly between her fingers and a silent defiance on her face. They've been over this before, but Sokka shrugs regardless. 

"I don't tell if you don't," he says breezily, and she relaxes slightly, unscrews the cap and takes a small drink. He trusts her, trusts Suki, and moreover trusts everyone here that nothing had will happen. She'll hardly make it through her screwdriver, taking long and dispersed sips so she's barely buzzed, and Sokka will only be fully tipsy by the time she's out for the night. Infallible. 

He watches as she heads through the backdoors towards the pool and follows, grins as the door opens and Suki's music—real Suki, not big extravagant party Suki's music—blares from the big suitcase speaker by the door. Toph and Ty Lee are in the water, both as loud as can be and going at each other amiably, and Suki sits on the edge of the pool to join them. Zuko, Mai, and Aang are sitting at the table to the left, the lights strung up around the back seating area basking them in a warm yellow glow. Zuko's bent down over a notebook as Aang hangs across his shoulder, speaking loud and fast in his ear as Mai watches the scene with a rare look of open amusement. Katara heads towards the pool. Sokka heads towards whatever Aang is putting Zuko through.

"Sokka!" Aang greets cheerily, smiling sunnily and yet not making any move to remove himself from Zuko's side. Mai gives him a two finger wave around the curve of her bottle and a small smile. Zuko looks up, his hair messy and falling around his face, cheeks red and eyes soft behind their glossiness and—oh. 

Oh. So, Zuko is a very, very cute drunk. 

Zuko is very, very cute at baseline—but Sokka can tell tonight's gonna be a very difficult one for his resolve the second a lopsided grin graces his lips and he throws him a loose peace sign. Out of everyone here, Sokka was not expecting Zuko to be plastered, and certainly not in such a state he's in now. The last time Sokka had seen Zuko and alcohol mix had been—well, had been just heartbreaking, really. 

"Hey, Zu. Feeling good?" Sokka ganders as he settles into the free seat between Zuko and Aang's now shared seat and Mai, who looks just as amused at the spectacle as Sokka feels. She's intimidating, with eyes as cold as steel and the air of someone always, always in the loop, but for the first time she doesn't seem so scary, Sokka thinks. 

"Mhm," he hums, swatting away Aang's attempts to reach down to the notebook and keeping his eyes on Sokka. "Mai and Aang are making me draw them as a superhero duo. Only problem is their completely incompatible, and won't budge on their powers—"

"I wanna fly! My power's so much cooler, anyways—"

"Cooler than knives?" Mai interjects swiftly, raises a challenging eyebrow, yet her eyes convey not of the fight her words and expression would indicate. Sokka tries to picture how the fuck Aang and Mai became friends in the hour and a half it took Sokka and Katara to get to Suki's. He comes up blank, and decides not to question it. 

They continue bickering, Aang ranting forever and ever and being shot down by Mai's short—and incredibly valid—points, and Zuko shoots Sokka a look that tells him this has been his evening so far. 

"Hey, Sokka!" Suki calls midway through Aang's argument about dodging Mai's knives through the air—because apparently they're nemeses now?—and Sokka jolts out of the conversation to glance over at the pool. Suki grins at him mischievously and nods her head towards Zuko. "Your boy jumped out of a moving car today."

These halts even Aang and Mai's debate as everyone rabbles around the new subject that him and Katara are the only ones not privy to. He raises his eyebrows and looks over to Zuko, who shrugs and rises from his spot with Aang but offers no input to the contrary. Sokka immediately rises and follows over to where he's heading towards the far end of the pool. 

"It was so awesome!" Aang butts in as he pulls himself up onto the table and tucks his legs up under himself. "I shoulda recorded it," he adds remorsefully, and Mai pats his arm mockingly and feigns despair. Zuko huffs a laugh and kicks off his shoes, sinking down to the concrete and dipping his feet into the water. 

Somehow, the conversation easily jerks away from the fact that three of his friends leaped from the back of a pickup truck this evening with little explanation, and Sokka let's it wash over him as Toph and Zuko tell them about their latest customer service episodes at the Jasmine Dragon.

Sokka tugs off his shirt and dives into the water midway through, settling beside Zuko's legs in the water as the conversation buzzes bright and easy around them. Mai and Aang leave their secluded table and join them around the steps sloping down into the bowl, Mai dipping her feet and Aang diving headfirst after Sokka. 

Everything feels so perfect, and for once it doesn't feel so fragile. The ice below them separating their usual harsh realities is momentarily tough and weight-bearing, and Sokka feels like he can breathe without the fear of something collapsing beneath them. Everyone seems happy, and calm—Sokka feels tipsy and bubbly beneath his skin, light and floaty and unburdened. 

He cranes his neck back to look up at Zuko, braced back on his wrists and smiling loosely at something Toph's just said, and he just looks far too comfortable for Sokka to let slide.

He nudges Aang under the water while Zuko's distracted, nods his head towards him as subtly as possible considering their proximity, but Aang seems to get it and nods in the least subtle way possible. Zuko still doesn't catch on, somehow.

It's uncoordinated and Aang is laughing before they've even got him half pulled into the water, but it doesn't matter because the art of surprise works in their favor and they manage to get him tugged off of the edge and into the water with them before anyone else even noticed their plan. Zuko yells, kicks at them as he realizes what's happening, but he's drug under before his actions have any merit. 

He surfaces, spluttering and glaring, hair sticking on his forehead and across his neck, but Sokka just tips his head back and positively fucking cackles. His triumph doesn't last long before Zuko launches himself at him and pushes him beneath the water. 

He lets himself be submerged, here's the muffled sounds of splashes above the surface as everyone likely follows Zuko in hopping in the pool, but Sokka stays under for a second, and, much to his surprise, Zuko sinks down with him a few moments later. 

Sokka opens his eyes against the sharp burn of the salt water, blinks a few times so things stop blurring out so much, and feels his heart clench when he finds Zuko looking right back at him.

In the bright and blue pool lights, he looks otherworldly. His previously flattened hair fans out around him, and the sharp edges in the low night light of the world above are softened out by the water. He pushes himself closer to Sokka, breathes out a bit as bubbles push to the surface, and he's so, so close, Sokka could just bob forward and kiss him crazy—

Until he's met with a middle finger to the face and Zuko pushes himself back up to the surface for air. Sokka feels a laugh bubble in his chest and it catches in his throat as the water takes advantage of the lapse and he breaks the surface as well, his laughter mingling with his coughing as Zuko looks smug and once more bedraggled by the water. He somehow looks just as beautiful, which is so supremely unfair that Sokka doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it. 

~

To make up for his transgressions, once they get out of the pool for the night Sokka gives Zuko some of the spare clothes that he always has stashed away in the van. It's an oversized Pink Floyd hoodie and a pair of basketball shorts that Zuko has to tuck the waistline up into so that they don't slide down, but somehow, he makes it work. No one asks, but Sokka prepares a response about it being an act of mercy saving Zuko from soaked skinny jeans for the rest of the night instead of just an excuse to get Zuko into his clothes without coming off as a total weirdo.

Everyone eventually makes their way inside and congregates around Suki's big brown sectional. When Sokka emerges from the bathroom to get settled for the night, he catches a glimpse of a figure out by the pool still, cast in the glow of the moon and illuminated by the same blue from the pool lights, looking as poetic as always and yet so, so different than usual. Sokka casts a glance towards the living room before slipping out the back door and towards him. 

His feet dangle of the end of the board where he's sitting, his toes barely grazing the top of the water as he swings them back and forth. He has one of Suki's fluffy towels up around his neck, and is positively drowning in Sokka's hoodie, but he looks soft. Hair fluffy and features still so much more at ease uninhibited as he is. His hand is clutched in his hand, and the sight makes a spike of anxiety strike through him. He doesn't know how long he's been out here, but regardless by now Sokka's phone would be sunken to the bottom of the pool.

"Whatcha doing?" He asks after a beat more of soaking up the sight of him, and Zuko simply looks over his shoulder slow and languid. He somehow manages to make getting up from his spot graceful and heads over to where Sokka is, once more plopping back down into the same position and dangling his feet once more. Sokka watches for a beat, before taking it for the invitation that it is and sitting next to him. Thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, Sokka is thoroughly distracted.

Zuko's phone is still clutched in his hand tight, but when he turns his face to meet Sokka's gaze, so close and yet still feeling so, so far away, the look in his eyes hardly matches the ferocity in his grip. He holds Sokka's eyes for a beat longer than usual, and god, they're so fucking amber it hurts, before turning his phone over in his hand and passing it to Sokka. 

Sokka frowns, keeping his gaze trained on Zuko even after the phone had been passed into his hands. Zuko looks up to the sky and glosses over, so Sokka takes one last long look at his profile and looks down at the phone. 

It's a picture of a photo, of a beautiful woman with long, dark hair falling over her shoulders and a sweet smile on her lips. Her features are so achingly familiar, and Sokka doesn't have to ask to know who she is. In the picture, her arms wrap around Zuko's shoulders, and he doesn't look much younger, but what's jarring about the picture and almost upsetting is the glaringly obvious lack of scar tissue across his face. Sokka stares, and stares, and wonders why this unblemished Zuko feels like such a stranger to him. 

Furthermore, in Zuko's arms is a little girl that looks identical to both of them, tufty black hair pulled up into two little knots on the top of her head and positively beaming up at Zuko, her hands frozen in Zuko's short hair. Zuko's expression in the picture is relaxed, as it is beside Sokka now, but if this is what Sokka's pretty sure it is, then that doesn't make sense. 

"That's the little sister I was telling you about—Kiyi," he says without looking away from the sky. Something feels unfinished, so Sokka remains still and quiet as Zuko swallows hard. "And my mom." 

Sokka remains quiet still, assumption confirmed and yet a million questions still swimming around and clouding his vision. Zuko doesn't offer anything else. Sokka's not sure he really plans to.

"You all look so much alike," he says instead of letting the quiet perpetuate, looking back down at the picture, and Zuko huffs and nods, looking down at the pool instead of up at the sky.

"Growing up everyone told me I looked like my dad," he says, and Sokka freezes, is suddenly acutely aware that this is the first time he can recall Zuko saying anything at all about his father. Zuko looks over to Sokka, and he's openly sad, which is better than the stonewall Sokka's been met with in the past, despite how much it hurts him to see. Progress can't always be easy, he thinks blearily. "I think you're the first person that's ever said I look like her."

"Were you close?" Sokka risks after a few more quiet moments pass between them, and Zuko tenses ever so slightly beside him, before—before he lays his fucking head on Sokka's shoulder and Sokka's whole body feels like it's been lit on fire. He tries so, so hard to keep his cool and hopes Zuko can't sense how much he's panicking. This is different than the night Sokka had picked him up from the park—Zuko needed him, then. Now, it feels like he's choosing him.

"Yes and no," he answers ever cryptically, and Sokka nods, content with at least getting an answer at all, but Zuko continues. "We had a strange relationship. In the end it was good, and without her I never would have gotten another shot at being a big brother, but we needed more time to fix everything that happened between us."

Sokka's just getting around to picking apart all of that when Zuko keeps talking and he promptly checks into complete absorption mode. 

"She died. A year ago on the 20th. I just—I never told you what happened that night. Why I was so fucked up, and-and everything,” Zuko takes a deep breath, and Sokka just can’t believe that he’s still talking, but he’s definitely not going to take it for granted, and is holding onto every word like a lifeline to pick apart and put back together later. “So much happened after she died—like, literally my whole life just went upside down. I don’t think with everything else going on I really came through on the other side of things properly grieved, or whatever. I didn’t think it would hit me as hard as it did, but—well, you say.”

Sokka inhales long and carefully, but Zuko doesn’t move from his position, doesn’t even falter at all, and instead seems to sink deeper against him. And fuck it, if they’re really doing this tonight, Sokka might as well just succumb to it. He leans his head against Zuko’s and takes another deep breath.

“My mom died when I was 7. It’s been almost a decade, and every year I still get knocked on my ass by it. It’s not something that ever feels less fucking ruinous, whether you’re grieved for one year or ten. But with people by your side—it, it feels less overbearing, alone, I guess is what I’m trying to say.” Sokka wants to kick himself, wants to simultaneously fucking bolt because he can’t even think straight when it matters most and also glue himself to this moment forever, to be open and honest with Zuko and get that back in return for the rest of his life. 

“Yeah,” Zuko finally says, and Sokka feels him take a long breathe at his side, and Sokka breathes too, because Zuko’s still here, so he hasn’t messed everything up yet. “That’s what you did for me, Sokka,” Zuko says quietly, a vulnerable whisper between them that builds up a huge lump in Sokka’s throat. “You made everything so much better. You make everything so much better.”

Sokka forces back the tears that bite at the corners of his eyes, works around the lump in his throat choking him so profoundly. He has absolutely no idea what to say, how to respond to Zuko’s words and how to wrap his head around everything else at the same time. 

But Zuko doesn’t seem to expect him to. He just settles into Sokka’s side further and slides his eyes closed, quiet and relaxed, so Sokka doesn’t try. He has hours to labor over the words and work them over until they’re worn bare and raw, but he won’t always have Zuko pressed against his side and have the world around him so serene and calm, so he lets it go and tries to ground himself in the moment. It already feels like a distant memory even in its instantaneousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! I’m uhm so sorry this took so long to get out?? It’s here, it’s huge, and it’s mostly filler, but hey if you get through the first like 6000 words you get a bit of development there at the end ;)
> 
> Just wanted to say that the story about Sokka and switching the boards was something told to me by a friend of mine that surfs because I Uhhh skate but don’t surf so I’m lost on what the fuck kinda things are a big deal or not so yeah. Shoutout to him for giving me the deets on some surf culture. 
> 
> Guys can I just like,,keep this story going forever?? I legit have so many ideas for this world and these characters like this has been such a stress relief n comfort for me but I already have so many subplots and this still has so many more chapters mapped out ahhh!! And I don’t want to end it with so much left to say beyond the overarching main plot of this particular fic—would anyone ready prequels/sequels if I wound up posting them when I finally get my ass in gear and finish this for real??
> 
> That’s truly long term, more so just letting you guys know I uhhh don’t think I’ll be able to let this go for a while, if y’know, less frequent updates gave any sort of impression of lack of inspiration. I’m running on empty entirely, and am gonna be adjusting to a lotta shit in these next coming weeks, but even so this bad boy is alive and well.
> 
> Also!!! I feel like I have to say this with every chapter, but seriously—you guys are SO nice and it makes me absolutely fucking lose it reading all your comments and all of your support is just so, so insane to me. Seriously, every one of your comments means so much to me, and it’s insane how much reception this fic—something that I believed for months before posting was too self indulgent and kinda niche to pick up any speed—has garnered. You guys all kick ass and I’m so, so happy to have each one of you, and I hope that you can continue to enjoy this story as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing it with you. <3


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko’s past comes back to haunt him, and we learn how exactly Iroh first reconnected with his estranged nephew.
> 
> Sokka and Suki take a little day trip, and Sokka meets somebody important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the first half of this chapter—a bit of nuanced suicidal ideation!! Alluded child abuse, vague descriptions of a toxic relationship, and Zuko reflects a lot, which lends itself to a bunch of angst and sadness in itself. Be safe out there, friends.

Zuko fights with the fire escape in the back alley of the Jasmine Dragon for a good few minutes before he tumbles into his room. 

He could've slept over at Suki's for the night, probably realistically should have, but Sokka had wanted a big gulp slurpee. And in turn, Zuko had wanted Sokka, and 7/11 had been closer to his apartment and Sokka's house than it was to track back to Suki's. Sokka had walked him home, had stolen sips of Zuko's drink in between the words Zuko can't recall now, and had smiled softly at him as he'd waved goodbye. It was a good night, Zuko thinks hazily, even though he can hardly really think at all. He feels warm and soft in ways he didn’t know he could anymore, which feels as good an indication as any, so he rolls with it. Doesn’t really have the inhibition at this point to do anything but. 

He peers at himself in the darkness of his room in the mirror by his door. His mouth is dyed blue, and the thought only irks the question of if Sokka's is now purple. 

He changes—tugs on Sokka's Pink Floyd hoodie over his fresh clothes and pulls it up over his nose. He breathes deep, feels almost more intoxicated by the smell itself than the liquor coursing through his system, before throwing himself onto the bed. He pulls the sleeves down from over his palms and rubs at his blurry eyes, the rough and smooth skin alike, before settling back in and tugging the blanket at the foot of his bed up to his chin.

The stars on his ceiling glow back at him faintly, and Zuko can't think of a time in his life that he's gone home after a night of drinking so warm. He stopped drinking and partying because of the bad memories, but feeling like he does now he thinks maybe it had nothing to do with the inebriation itself. He's been wasted three times in the past year—tonight, the night with Sokka at the skatepark, and back last July. July, a month that Zuko locks away as much as possible, and yet still feels dredged up repeatedly against his wishes. Zuko drifts off to sleep and feels the cold memories from last summer chase him all the while, the chill digging deep into his subconscious before he can stop it. He sinks deeper and deeper, and further away from the warmth floating just out of reach.

When he wakes up in his ambiguity, everything is jarringly unfamiliar, and was even in the conscious moment.

The bed he jolts up from creaks beneath him, low to the ground and dingy, and his head already pounds despite the inebriation in his mind giving way enough to warrant a hangover. He doesn't remembers whose house Jet had drug him to tonight, but he remembers not caring. Remembers a red stained school file in the mail, and a fire alive in his father's eyes that he didn't want to stick around to meet. Jet had called. Zuko had answered.

And he hadn't wanted to be here, necessarily, in a dingy house at the bottom of the valley in a room full of strangers getting hazier and hazier, but it was better than the alternative. It hadn’t mattered that him and Jet were in the midst of a particularly rough and ever worsening patch. It doesn't change the fact that he suddenly wants out now, though—doesn't want to go home, but doesn't want to be here. Like being dunked in ice water, Zuko realizes he has no one and now where else to turn to. For some reason, waking up with Jet’s arm slung across him and the bitter words he’d spewed at him probably only hours before still fresh in Zuko’s mind only makes everything so much worse. Makes it feel like he’s boiling over, finally, and coming up for air after months and months—maybe even years—of drowning. He has nowhere to go and no one to turn to, but it doesn't stop him from pushing Jet's arm off of him and making a dash for the door. 

It creaks open loudly when he pushes at it, gives way to the living room he last remembers being conscious in. The TV in the corner is buzzing some late night, long running infomercial and a few eyes in the pile of people around the couch are trained to it, but none of them pay much mind when Zuko crosses their path and slips out the front door. It smacks shut behind him too loud and too sharp in the building quiet around him, and even alone he jerks away from it. 

He braces himself against the worn wood railing of the porch, breathes deeply in and out into the cool night air. It's pitch black all around, the dim and foggy lamps out on the street yellowed out and unhelpful. The bugs chirp around him from all directions, and somewhere in the distance a dog barks—but besides that the night is shrouded in a blanket of uneasy quiet he can't stand. The sky is bruised, black and inky behind the stringy clouds, and it's endlessly oppressive. He fumbles in his hoodie pocket for his phone, fruitlessly tries to turn it on a few times and is met with the same flashing empty bar, and shoves it back down. He leans his head against the beam and shuts his eyes, takes a deep breath and weighs his options. 

He doesn't have his car. Jet's asleep, and the last thing he wants is to go back in there, wake him up, scream for 20 minutes around handful of strangers before ultimately getting suckered into calming back down. Besides not having a car, he doesn't know where he is. He could find his way back to the hills eventually, stumbling and hungover and smelling like weed—right into a million dollar estate. Right into his father's red hot grip. 

He feels like he could cry, and wants to scream at the mottled sky.

He can't keep doing this. Can't keep following the whim of those around him, can't keep dulling himself by drinking and smoking every night just so the sharpness of being alive doesn't cut him so deep. He needs to change, has needed to change for a while before he becomes his father or follows in the same steps as Azula, always a puppet and never a person—just as they were raised to be. They're not so different, he thinks. On either end of their father's emotional spectrum, hated and beloved. No, not beloved. The thought of love in correlation with the man makes Zuko recoil—Azula is nothing more than a possession to him, that much he’s objective enough to understand. A pawn in the game he's playing with their family, the company, with life. Zuko's glad she's away at school most of the time. He both doesn't want her subject to the crumbling walls around them and doesn't want to be at the end of the barrel of her gun, waiting to see which way she's going to fire. He's not delusional enough to believe she won't side with their father if it all comes to a head. Everything's is too fractured, too snapped out of place and disturbingly wrong for her to not. He can’t say that he’d blame her.

Zuko knows it’s fucked. Knows that years spent avoiding the severity of how badly and pretending that there was anything but resentment and anger in that household only made it all worse. Drove his mother away, and in turn drive him further from who he is—if he even is a whole person, anymore. For a while, he maybe had Jet, has some identity in that. And it hadn't been bad. 

Now, it feels like he's suffocating wherever he turns. 

The door screeches out into the night and Zuko tenses, curls himself further from the low light the porch provides, feels anger curdle amidst everything else boiling up inside him. 

"Zu?" The sound of a lighter. The light from flames dancing across the railing. A long inhale and exhale—the smell of smoke. "What're you doing out here, baby?"

"Don't call me that," Zuko snaps, that anger crawling up his throat and out of him before he can stop it. It's not Jet's fault Zuko's spent the past few months following after him like a pathetic puppy, not his fault that he feels so hollowed out now—but it doesn't change everything he feels, regardless of the fact that it's not entirely Jet's fault. He’d be fucked if they hadn’t ever met, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t worse off because they did.

Jet huffs, takes another drag, and positions himself next to Zuko on the rail. Zuko casts a look at him, shirtless and sleep rumpled with the cigarette dangling from his lips, and looks away again. The fluctuations between their good and bad periods have muddied and sullied together, and in the place of the moments that had kept him holding onto the hope that Jet really cared are the bruises on his body from their rows. Split lips bruised deeper from rough kisses. Iron on his tongue, venom on his lips. 

"Fine," he sighs, and Zuko doesn't have to look to see the roll of his eyes. "I'm tired. And cold. What's got your panties in a twist, princess? I'm not gonna wait out here all night." Zuko bites his tongue, tries not to choke on the smoke billowing around him and spill his guts over the edge of the porch. He pointedly throws his gaze towards Jet, who looks like he's won. Zuko doesn't know why he cares, but it doesn't stop it from aching in his bones. 

"Give me your keys," he grits out, breathing through the frustration thrumming through him at the quirked eyebrow Jet gives him. He feels the imminent confrontation and cuts him off. "I'm serious. Give me the fucking keys."

"Why are you leaving?" He asks with a whine lodged deep in his throat, tipping his head back against the pole dramatically. Zuko scoffs. "Just-c'mon. Just stay. I'll drive you home in the morning—"

"I want to leave," he says, and sounds petulant even to his own ears, but if he thought he was worn thin before—well, this conversation is doing nothing for his sanity. What's left of it, at least. "Please, Jet. Can you just not fucking fight me on this? I'll come by the home tomorrow morning and drop your car off—"

"I don't give a fuck," Jet says suddenly, and Zuko jerks away as he shoves his hand deep into the pocket of his too tight jeans and presses the sharp cold keys into Zuko's sternum. His eyes are steely and cold, but he does look tired, really, bone deep, and Zuko hates that in that moment he still wants to just ask if he's okay. Whatever Jet that would have given him a response to that question is gone now, just like the Zuko that would have asked it is.  
"Have fun with your dad," he grumbles as he turns back towards the house, hand grasping around the screen door frame, it's piercing creak enunciated by the poignant slam. Zuko stares after it for a moment, before shaking himself and descending the steps into the dark front yard towards the beater parked along the side of the road. 

He pushes himself forward, shoves thoughts of where and who and how out of his mind as he turns the engine over, pushes his phone onto the charger and drives away into the night. His head hurts so bad, feels like it's about to just fucking explode, but he creeps along out of the neighborhood, further and further towards the slums until the street lamps are too white and fluorescent instead of too yellowed and dim. 

He pulls over in a bail bonds parking lot, checks the time on his phone—3:17–and thinks of the one person he doesn't want to bother. His only other option feels like running off into the night. Draining his account on food and gas, pulling whatever he can from his dad’s credit card before he realizes what’s happening and just disappearing. Becoming someone new and different—maybe drive up to Seattle, where his mom’s family is, see if they’re anywhere near as atrocious. As he thinks it, he already knows he doesn't have a choice. He searches his contacts for an unfamiliar number. 

The phone rings and rings, and it's three in the fucking morning so it makes sense, but Zuko isn't sure where he's supposed to go if he doesn't answer, and he tugs his thumb between his teeth and bites his nails so short the tips of his fingers throb. There's no answer. He calls again, feels increasingly guilty and about ready to just deal with his father, before the line clicks and picks up. 

"Zuko?" His uncle croaks, and the second he hears his voice the sob he hadn't known had been building chokes up his throat and erupts, the tears burning their tracks down his cheeks as he throws his head against the head rest. When did he get this upset? Was it always there, burning beneath the surface? Why now, he wants to scream. 

"I—I didn't know where else to go," he says around the burning guilt clogging up his throat. He feels tears track down his nose, across his jaw and down his chest. Feels pathetic, and angry, and scorching, and so, so alone.

"Nephew, where are you?" He asks, and he sounds hours away from the sleep addled man he was moments before. Zuko shakes his head, screws his eyes shut so tightly it hurts, and listens blearily as he repeats the question. 

"Can you come get me?" He finally manages, before rushing to add— "I-I'll send you my location," he says instead of 'I let my boyfriend get me so fucked up before a party that I don't know where I am and have no other friends or anyone else to turn to.' 

His uncle's affirmation is all he needs and he hangs up before he can ask anymore questions and quickly shares his location with him, shutting off the car and trying to just fucking breathe. He can get himself back together before uncle gets here, he can—and yet the tears won't stop tearing through his eyes, scraping raggedly across his cheeks. 

So much is so wrong, and Zuko feels all of it all at one—everything feels to broken to fix. He feels to broken to fix, too fucked up and disturbed to ever be real again. 

He hasn't stopped crying when a slick Jaguar pulls up next to him and his uncle steps out. His uncle that he hasn't seen in almost two months, who's still in the process of grieving his son and doesn't need his unhinged nephew ringing his line at three in the morning because tonight of all nights he decided he can't take it anymore. 

He throws open the door of Jet's beat up Honda and throws himself at the man, feels the tears still ripping him open as they fall and holds tight, feels his uncle hold him back and finally doesn't feel like he's suffocating for a brief moment. 

"Let's get you home," he says after a minute, and the words should seize him with panic, yet they slip between them and Zuko knows that he's not returning to his father tonight. Knows in the tone of his uncles voice and the iron grip around Zuko’s body that it will be okay for the night. That just for tonight, he's not doing this alone. That he has someone else in his corner, keeping everything else at bay. The morning will come, and the sun will crest over California, and Zuko will have to go back to his father. For now, that feels years away instead of hours. 

Zuko cries silently in the passenger seat the whole way to his uncle's penthouse. He can't stop, feels like he's just leaking his whole soul out onto his uncle's fancy leather seats. He says nothing, keeps his eyes trained on the road as rain starts to beat down on the windshield. Says nothing until they pull into the garage and turns to Zuko, features drawn and tears developing in his own creased eyes.

"Something has to change, nephew," is all he says, but Zuko thinks it's enough. He knows what he means, knows that his uncle doesn’t know the specifics of Zuko’s life as he’s sure he wishes, but knows enough to know how much he’s messed it all up. He won't make it to 20, at this speed, by his own hand or his father's. He needs to slow down, but doesn't know how to stop. 

Zuko makes it through the night. This is unsurprising, but what is is when he wakes up in the morning and him and his uncle have a long, laborious talk. It ends up being the most singularly difficult thing that Zuko's ever gone through, and he feels so much worse after it that he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to be reassured by his uncle’s repeated assurances that he isn’t going back to his father. 

Two hours later, his uncle has a plan. 

Two day's later, Zuko has a third degree burn viscerally carved into the side of his face. 

Two weeks later, he's in the hospital relearning how to walk, and two months later, his uncle has custody.

Zuko jolts awake with his breath lodged in his throat and panics, sees flashes of light white and hot and bright against his eyes and has to blink away the flashes of a nightmare he's had time and time again and focus on where he is. On the posters strung up everywhere, on the soft and familiar blanket tangled around his ankles, of Sokka's big warm hoodie around him. 

He kicks the blankets off of his feet and bee lines for the door, bleary eyed and stumbling but wholly focused. He fumbles downstairs on too fast and too clumsy feet, throws open his uncles bedroom door, and collapses onto the ground at his bedside. 

Iroh stirs, rubs at his eyes and reaches for the light on his nightstand as a half-focused question starts to form, but Zuko doesn't wait for it to come and simply throws his arms around him. His uncle stills beneath him, but Zuko doesn't care.

He's okay. He's out of it, and he's as safe as he's been his whole life. And he wouldn't have any of it without the man before him. He can't put it into words for him, not even in his own head, but when his uncles arms come up around his back, Zuko thinks that he at least gets it on some level. It's all he can hope for until he has the strength to thank him for just how much he's done.

~

"Tell me again why we're here. Sokka, do you even own a record player?" 

The pads of Sokka's fingertips feel dusty and sore from flicking through both sleeved and unsleeved records alike. He made Suki drive him up into the Valley for this, and to come up empty handed now feels crushing. The trip itself has been worth it, at least. Suki's been on lockdown for a few days now, but finally managed to slip away and high tail it out of Venice for a day trip. Neither of them are all too familiar with the area, but getting lost in Suki's bruiser car amidst Beamers and Izod clad Vals proved the endeavor worthy—that, and the record store stuck in a different time. Granted, it's his first time ever being in any record store, so maybe they're all like this, but the mulleted man behind the counter wears a faded out Bon Jovi shirt and has been reminiscing about some tour back in the 70s with another customer the whole twenty minutes they've been in here. 

Sokka wonders what Zuko would think of the place. He can vividly picture him striking up a conversation with the man just to humor him and maybe because he harbors some sort of genuine understated interest that Sokka's caught glimpses of. Wonders how he'd look with the high afternoon sun hitting him as his nimble fingers flipped through the spines of the albums. He wonders what albums it would be that would catch his eye, if Sokka would even be able to recognize them or if he'd just embarrass himself. If the smell of settled dust and something vaguely musty would be as weirdly alluring to him as it is to Sokka—

Suki snaps in his face, features drawn and concerned, and Sokka shakes himself of his daydream. 

"You with me?"

"Yeah." He blinks again, looks down at the album that his fingers caught on, frowns, and looks back up at her. "Sorry."

"So," she drawls, gesturing around the place as if they haven't spent the past quarter of an hour here. "New hobby? If so, why are we starting with an oddly specific punk album from the seventies?" 

"It's not for me, weirdo. And it's not 'oddly specific', or punk, apparently—" Sokka cuts himself off, because he doesn't really know what he's talking about besides the knowledge he's gained categorizing and fledging out the albums he needs. He doesn't know the album itself, no surprise, but knows that with massive amount of aligning selections from his dad's collection, he's down to the five. Five records, and then he figures out how to tell Zuko the true extent of how he feels. He's on borrowed time. 

Sometimes, when he stares at the records stacked up in the corner of his room, it feels like overstepping. Because it could be, for all he knows, but things seem to be getting easier, which is as reassuring as it is terrifying. Zuko's opening up to him, yes, but at what point does the other shoe drop and it goes to far? At what point does he pull back again—only this time, Sokka's foolishly put his heart on the line. 

"It's for Zuko," he says when he realizes the loudness in his head in no way profs through the silence between them. Suki's hand stills around the record she's amusedly examining, and Sokka looks up in time to see her quell down her smile into something more neutral. She hums, so purposely feigning nonchalance that Sokka wants to bury his face in his hands. 

"Really?" She asks in a completely unsurprised tone, and Sokka's never going to understand how she's a step ahead of all of them at any point, but turn again he supposes he isn't exactly subtle—that doesn't excuse every other facet of his life, though. She's too smart for her own good, and puts his own acute observational skills to shame. Sokka doesn't bother mentioning any of this, though, giving into his situation and slumping against the rack behind him. Suki looks up and drops the facade, eyebrows drawing when Sokka hangs his head. 

"Remember that night we all slept over at mine? And me and Zuko were late?" Suki's eyes brighten and she opens her mouth to speak, but Sokka barrels on. "Nothing happened, but we went to his place before to change, and we—well, it doesn't matter, but it was the first time he actually told me stuff. Like, real stuff. And it's Zuko, so, y'know.."

"Half truths and fragmented pieces?"

"Basically. But he told me that before he moved in with his uncle, his records got destroyed. He was really touchy about it, and I think that it was pretty bad. I-I don't know, I thought that maybe getting them back would be good for him. Closure, maybe? He doesn't talk about anything before the Jasmine Dragon, you know that, and I think the fact that he did that day has gotta count for something, right?"

Suki stays quiet and leans back against the rack across from him, a smile gracing her lips as she relaxes against the shelf. She turns over the record in her hands, looks down at it before back at Sokka, and extends it to him. The album cover he'd had saved in his phone looks back at him as he turns it over in his hands, and he pushes down the urge to throw his arms around her. 

"This is really serious, huh?" She finally says as Sokka runs his fingers along the protruding edges of the art on the front, and Sokka push the immediate spike of panic at the thought down, lets it sit uneasily in his chest before finally loosening and expanding warm and tight in his chest, weaving between his ribs and settling low in his stomach. All consuming. 

"Yeah, I think so. Which is, y'know, fucking terrifying, but. There's no one like him. I really, really like him, Suki," he whispers in the quiet of the store, the chatter of the two men at the front drowned out by the admission hanging between them. Two people, now. Sokka has told two people, and the world keeps spinning. "And my feelings aside, I still want to do this," he says, tapping the front of the record with two fingers as Suki's eyes trace the movement. "He can reject me—ostracize and want nothing to do with me, and it'll break my heart, but if doing this means even half of what I think it will, I want to see it through. I'm going to see it through."

"Oh, no," Suki says after another pensive moment where Sokka feels like he's said too much, and the grin on her lips catches him so off guard all apprehension and fear momentarily fizzes away into the background noise, too. "He's turned you into a sap. Sokka, what happened to you? What happened to my pragmatic best friend, who doesn't believe in love and fairy tales—what has Zuko done with him? I want him back—"

Sokka pushes away as Suki throws her arms around him, prattling on about nonsense as the tension still simmering in his blood fully evaporates into the clear acceptance Suki's offering him. Sokka can do her brand of humor better than he can do sappy heart to hearts, and so he lets himself laugh along with her teasing and pushes back just enough that it feels fair.

They deliberate on the drive back to Venice for as long as they can, taking detours and backroads and stopping at two different In-n-Outs just to buy the time. At the drive thru for the second, Sokka gets a message from Toph to come hang at the Jasmine Dragon for her shift, and the prospect of heading back to Dogtown feels much more agreeable as they order everyone's regular alongside their own. 

Sokka tucks the record under his seat when they park out front. Suki throws a wink his way, and Sokka flips her off. 

Sokka's not sure when Iroh started letting Appa hang around inside the shop, but when they push open the doors he's smack in the middle of the room, pushed up underneath a table that's not their regular one underneath the feet of a woman that Sokka's never seen before. It's a slow day, and she's one of the only customers in the lobby, but she doesn't seem to mind him, so Sokka doesn't bother chastising him and instead turns his attention over to Katara and Aang, smushed into their regular booth closest to the counter and chatting with Toph, who's got herself pulled up onto said counter. Suki hops over and pulls herself into the bench opposite them and passes their food their way as Aang cheers louder than appropriate for their arrival. Sokka shakes his head as he slips in beside Suki.

Toph abandons her post and smushes herself up against Aang's side on the opposite side as well, and conversation quickly builds around full mouths and raucous laughter. If it were anywhere else, they'd probably be kicked out, but it's Iroh—even though he's nowhere to be seen today—and they're about as regular as you can get at an establishment. Sokka tries not to take note of Zuko's missing presence as much as his heart dictates him too. 

Eventually, the bell above the door jingles and Sokka looks up, feels the smile break out across his features before he even makes the connection that the voice he's hearing is Zuko's. 

Zuko, speaking softly and quietly, a bright pink backpack slung over his shoulder and his gaze craned downwards. Sokka follows that gaze down to his extended hand, to the tiny hand pressed into it, and further down to the little girl it belongs to. Tiny and cute, inky hair pulled up into a messy little bun on the top of her head, a tiny floral shirt paired with the smallest pair of harem pants Sokka's ever seen consuming her small frame. Sokka inhales sharply, remembers the girl from the picture the other night at the pool, and doesn't even realizes he's up and out of the booth until he's halfway to Zuko. 

Zuko looks up, slow and languidly, and the soft smile stays firmly on his quirked lips, but his eyebrows furrow and confusion fills his eyes. From his peripheral, Sokka sees the girl back up slightly hand still gripping at Zuko's but falling back a few spaces, tucked half behind his leg. Sokka looks down and finds her looking right back at him. 

Zuko gets down onto his knees, looks to Sokka like he's inviting him to do the same—so he does—and then looks back to the little girl. 

"Sokka, this is Kiyi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a lot with uploading this tonight regarding everything going on in the west coast right now, but figured that maybe a little happy could do someone out there some good. To everyone directly affected, I wish you all well and hope that you’re safe. My heart aches.
> 
> On a lighter note, this chapter is a MONSTER—it’s 5000 words, which is pretty on par, but it was shaved down from like 12k that I had just continuously written, so it may end up being another two chapters (for a total of three) opposed to just one massive chapter 16. On the bright side, at least chapter 17 should be up sooner since most of its already written? And subsequently 18? Who knows, I’m completely winging this, always have been. 
> 
> Enjoy angsty pre-Venice beach Zuko. Please rise for the Jetko national anthem—Self Esteem by the Offspring. In all seriousness, I don’t *hate* Jet as much as it’s gonna seem as this progresses. Him and Zuko are just,,especially ill matched for one another in this universe. Which will be expanded upon, as most aspects of this fic, but just-yeah. If you’re a jetko shipper I mean you no offense, but it ain’t bumping in this fic, sorry. 
> 
> I hope that everyone reading this is holding up okay out there—so much is going on in the world on so many facets, and I hope that you’re all safe and healthy and taking care of yourselves. I hope that for at least some of you an update will offer a bit of a reprieve from whatever real life is throwing at you, and that if things are tough they get easier, and if they’re good they continue on that path.
> 
> Just a lil more sap—I love all my readers, you’re all crazy awesome and your comments and support get me through life, man. All my love to all of you, always. <3


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka is an egghead. 
> 
> Sokka, Zuko, and Kiyi spend an afternoon bathed in the hazy Santa Monica sun. Short and sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, last update foolishly believing that I’d have this up reasonably soon after chapter 16 vs me now, war trodden and exhausted after 4 rewrites and many late nights :)))

Kiyi, almost instantly, latches onto Sokka. 

Which is objectively sort of a strange feeling—he's never really been around younger kids, not since he himself was little as well, and therefore has no idea how to react when Kiyi comes out from behind Zuko's legs, marches right up to Sokka, and says, "You look like an egg."

And she's a kid, so Sokka can't immediately come to his defense as everyone at the table behind him positively loses their minds, but he also can't exactly take offense. Or at least not when it's a tiny Zuko clone, which just really makes him weak all around. She’s got the same dark hair, the same round and warm eyes, watching him acutely—it dredges up images of what a Zuko at this age may have looked like, which doesn’t help at all. Suki's definitely right that he's going soft. 

Sokka ignores their table and moves forward, crouches down so that Kiyi doesn't have to crane her neck up at him. Her hand is still clasped in Zuko's, who mirrors Sokka and gets down to her level, looking entirely too smug for his own good. 

"My name's Sokka," he says instead of acknowledging the whole egg thing, even though he wants to ask just to get a glimpse into whatever prompted a four year old to take one look at him and call him an egg-head. Despite the insult (if that was her intent? Based upon Zuko's hardly concealed smile, he assumes it was), she smiles softly and waves. 

"I'm Kiyi," she says, and Sokka looks over to Zuko, finds him staring right back, soft around the eyes and looking at ease, and suddenly can't look away. Luckily, Katara crouches down on Sokka's other side, laughter dying down and warm smile. Kiyi's smile widens when she sees her. "I love your hair!" She says, which is better than egg-head, and causes Katara to shoot him a smug look. He sticks his tongue out at her, which evokes a little laugh from Kiyi. Her eyes crinkle at the edges like Zuko's, he notes.

“Thank you! I like yours. Did you do it yourself?” Katara asks, and God, something about the way that her features soften and her voice ticks up—he sees his mom so sharply and acutely he has to look away. When he does, Zuko’s looking right at him, and he furrows his eyebrows, an unspoken question written in his features. He nods his head towards the back as the rest of the group comes around Kiyi, and with one last look at Katara and mini-Zuko, Sokka follows him.

Zuko busies himself with making tea nearly immediately, which Sokka is starting to think is a bit of a nervous habit. Like clockwork, Zuko makes tea whenever that crease between his brows deepen and his features harden. It steadies his hands, Sokka thinks, the monotony of an action so ingrained that it’s second nature. He almost wants to point it out, to make light of an otherwise worrying habit and make note of the fact that it stems entirely from his uncle. He doesn’t. 

“Hey, do you remember last month when you said that you wanted to take me to the pier? That day that you took me surfing?” 

And yeah, how could Sokka forget the day that solidified every feeling that has him in his current predicament of being hopelessly in love with his best friend? Hands on Zuko in the gentle surf, ink on his skin and unspoken confessions on his breath. Sun soaked and saturated now, Sokka doesn’t think any part of that afternoon could possible leave him. 

“Yeah, why?” He asks warily, because Zuko’s baby sister is in the lobby, whom he’s made clear is very important and also very scarce in his life, and yet he has Sokka alone. 

“I’ve only got until tomorrow night. Then her dad’s back in town. But I wanna do something fun, and I wanted to know if you’d go with? To the pier, I mean. I don’t wanna go alone—just us—really, but also if it’s weird for you, you definitely don’t have to say yes, either—“

“Zuko, stop, of course I’ll go, are you kidding?” He cuts him off, and though the blush that creeps up Zuko’s neck is something to revel in it also makes a put in Sokka’s stomach form at the thought of his apprehension. As if Sokka’s answer could be anything but a resounding ‘yes’. “Are you sure that’s okay? You don’t want time alone with her or?” Zuko tilts his head and frowns. 

“I mean, of course. But I also want to spend time with you. And we never got to make up for that day, either, y’know,” and Zuko’s lip quirks up into a little half smile as he speaks, so things can’t be all wrong. Sokka can’t help but grin back and nod. 

“Right, yeah. So tomorrow, the pier?” He reiterates even though there’s absolutely no need. Zuko huffs a slight laugh but nods, turns back to tea more assured and at ease, and Sokka forces down the question of why he was so nervous to ask. “Like 4 o’clock?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sounds good,” Zuko says with another duck of his head, and he wordlessly passes off a few tea cups into Sokka’s arms and guides him back out to the lobby. 

Kiyi seats herself right next to Sokka in the booth and asks him a lot of questions in between the whole group fawning over her and poking fun at Zuko, but Sokka can’t help but think about tomorrow. About how despite the little girl pressed up against his side, this could be sort of like a date. Sort of. 

~

Sokka walks through the doors of the Jasmine Dragon at 4 o’clock sharp, board shorts low and tank top tight, looking just as SoCal as always, and yet Zuko feels something coil and spread warm in his chest. Which isn't really great, necessarily, considering he's got his baby sister tucked up against his side in the booth, but still. Sun soaked, sand streaked Sokka is never going to fail to take Zuko's breath away, and he's surrendered himself to this simple truth under the delusion that he ever had any say in the matter.

Sokka smiles as he sees them, a bright and radiant thing that Zuko nearly feels compelled to look away from just by the sheer magnetism of it, but that same quality keeps him staring dumbstruck as Kiyi looks up from her drawing beside him. 

"Sokka!" She greets cheerily, which makes Sokka's smile loosen into something—something softer, maybe. Not more real, but more private. Something reserved for Zuko and his sister, not every passerby on his walk over her or in the shop. 

"Kiyi!" He chirps back just as cheerily, slipping into the booth across from Zuko and—lord, help him—shooting Zuko a wink in lieu of his own greeting. "You miss me?" Kiyi hums a response, looks back down at her drawing, before hugging and looking back up at Sokka. Zuko bites back his smile. 

"Depends. Are you still going to the pier with us?" Her words mold around the word 'pier' a little funny, unfamiliar and he puckers a bit as well. As Zuko holds back another smile, Sokka nudges him under the table to indicate his own amusement, and turns his attention back to her. 

"Yes ma'am. ‘Course I am," he says, leaning forward on the table and trying to get a good look at Kiyi's napkin doodles. She tugs it back and shakes her head. 

"Not done yet. You can't see," she says, and sticks her tongue out at him. Sokka doesn't hesitate in doing the same, and Zuko melts a little bit. "In that case, yes. I missed you, and am happy to see you." 

Sokka looks mildly affronted at being spoken to so assertively by a four year old kid, but Zuko merely shrugs when he shoots him a look. He'll get used to it, and if not Zuko gets to watch in unabashed amusement as he's repeatedly affronted. Either way the coin flips, Zuko's winning.

"I'm glad to hear it?" Sokka says as Kiyi packs away her drawing, and Zuko would question her apt concealment if he wasn't used to it. 

"I like your hair today," she says, and leans forward to tug at one of the strands hanging out of Sokka's ponytail. Zuko knows better than to believe it's intentional, but regardless it is, as always, a good look. "You look like less of an egg head."

"Okay, y'know what," Sokka reaches up over his head, tugs down the ponytail, and lets his hair fall down to frame around his face. This time Zuko does purposefully look away, thinks of that day in Sokka's van with rain slamming down around them as something in Zuko's world really shifted. It had nothing to do with his hair, and yet the image of Sokka as radiant and bright as he had been freshly roughed up by the surf now in front of him looking just as beautiful—it's both unfair and exhilarating, and Zuko wants to work out how exactly that can be. For now, he can only watch as Kiyi smiles over at Sokka, nodding approvingly as said boy tries and fails to conceal his smile. 

Kiyi isn't shy, necessarily. She wasn't when Zuko first met her, and hasn't lost her charm and attitude despite everything else she's lost. Zuko thinks that he definitely owes a lot of the reparation with his mom to her, that she softened out the angry and burning edges of who he was before the accident, made him more malleable and open to the wrongness eating him alive. She made him want to be better, even through the fog of bad choices that was becoming the embodiment of who he was. A light at the end of the tunnel, knowing not who he was outside of their brief interactions and only caring that he had gentle words and a particular unnamable something that connected them. Zuko had cried at the prospect of her visiting him in the hospital, had been viscerally terrified of losing her, too, because he looked as ugly on the outside as he felt on the inside, and it could no longer be ignored.   
She had visited him in the hospital, hardly bat an eye at the bandages, and wrapped her arms around him.

Kiyi has never really been shy, and beyond that never shied away from the unknown, but a part of the light started to go out a bit with each day that passed and mom didn't come home. Zuko's not sure what death is like to a 4 year old, if it's effects bare any connection to that of a 17 year old's, but either way, she's quieter, now. It's been a year, and Ikem says she's better, that she rests easier and doesn't have sporadic fits of denial, but still. Conceptualizing loss is hard no matter where you are in life—but Zuko has no idea how to imagine it when understanding of everything else in her world is still developing and forming around her. 

But she's opening up to Sokka, strangely. She isn't as polite and soft spoken as she is around most strangers, and Zuko feels it loosen something deep, deep within him as he watches them interact. He wouldn't give up Kiyi for anything in the world, but something about that feeling brings forth locked away memories and causes the corrosive taste of metallic guilt to crawl up his throat. Flashes of amber eyes the same as his, their mother's features strewn across their father's personality. Azula, who he doesn't have this with. Azula, who abandoned him, but who Zuko has in turn now abandoned himself—

"Right, Zu?" 

Zuko shakes himself, blinks blearily at the unexpected wetness clouding the vision of the already fuzzy memory developing around him, and smiles. 

"You weren't even listening," she huffs, and reaches up to tug on the loose strands of hair falling out of his ponytail. 

"You're missing a very riveting conversation here, Zu," Sokka says with the most smug look Zuko has ever seen and yeah, maybe inviting him was a bad idea because he throws the second wink of the night his way and Zuko just dies. Just a little.

"Astronaut," Kiyi says. 

"Space cadet," Zuko corrects easily. 

"Same thing," she says with a shrug, and that's a fair point, so Zuko lets his head fall back against the booth and smiles easily. The action of which brings forth a strange thought, evoking something warm and underlying like the constant thrum of the ocean not even a mile away—waves rhythmic like his heart, warm and steady like Sokka's effortless smile and the smell of Jasmine tea. Simple pleasures, swirling and warping around a sun stained present. Easy, he thinks blearily, is slowly becoming the new norm. "Sokka said he's gonna win you a teddy bear."

"Darn right I am." Sokka makes a show of flexing his biceps, toned and tan from summers of a tirelessly active hobby, kissing each as Kiyi laughs softly. Zuko rolls his eyes at his antics, but doesn't miss the grin he throws Kiyi's way. "You ready to go?" He directs at her, who smiles inwardly and nods vigorously. Zuko makes a show of heaving a heavy sigh and dragging himself out of the booth, and the way it makes Kiyi laugh and Sokka grin makes it all worth it. 

He heads over to grab Kiyi's bag packed with a few essentials—still as startlingly pink and floral—and shrugs it over his shoulder. He salutes Jin behind the counter and follows Sokka and Kiyi on their way out the door. 

"I think this could be a new look for you. Hello Kitty e-boy?" Sokka says as he tugs on the zipper of the bag, and Zuko shoves him off as Kiyi seamlessly slips her hand into his. "What do you think, Kiyi? Think your big brother could use a little pop of color?"

"Hm, maybe. He used to dress a lot different—"

"Which we're not gonna talk about," he interjects, because being stuffed into Izods and slacks as he was in his formative years is not an image Zuko wants ingrained into Sokka's brain. Kiyi thinks it's hilarious, and maybe it is, but he's not sure what Sokka will think.

"He was also crabby. Well, more crabby. Mom used to get on his case about it—just like Uncle!" She says, and Zuko rolls his eyes, quells down the immediate acid that burns in his heart at the mention of their mom, because today is a good day. Today is a good day, so he purposefully thinks about the good. Thinks about the busy, tourist ridden street around them, the smell of salt in the air and the afternoon wind in his hair. Kiyi's hand in his. Sokka's profile when he smiles. Their mother, playfully chastising him on the few afternoons they had like this that Zuko didn't ruin. Kiyi sees the sun breaking through the clouds with those memories, and Zuko wants to as well.

"Is that so?" Sokka's voice sounds hesitant, treading lightly on a subject Zuko has inadvertently made so blasphemous between them that now Kiyi's nonchalance is strange. She's blissfully unaware, but that doesn't mean they aren't. Sokka catches his eye, a silent question in his gaze, but Zuko just smiles in lieu of an answer and looks back down to listen as Kiyi tells him about their trip to Paso Robles last year. 

~

The pier hits Sokka like a wave of the most potent nostalgia, smells and colors and sounds softening around him as something in his heart both aches and pounds against his chest. A constant background to an otherwise accustomed lifestyle, the Santa Monica pier isn't on his radar as much as it should be, he thinks. Being local has its perks, of course, but in lieu of more underground hangout spots, the pier's no resurfacing charm hits him right where it hurts. Right smack in the middle of summer's as a kid, wide eyed and sticky fingered. 

Just like Kiyi is now, hand in Zuko's and sharp eyes taking in everything. She talks like a mini adult, Sokka thinks, but with the tales expected of a four year old. She also hasn't been attached from Zuko's side the whole time they've been out, and definitely seems to like Sokka but still sometimes goes a bit quiet where Sokka gets loud. Which he doesn't understand, but also kids are a bit foreign for him. 

He also doesn't understand the invitation Zuko had extended his way to join them on their excursion. Besides Sokka's own invitation way back when Zuko and him first became friends—which is just a wild thought in and of itself—there's no real logical conclusion that Sokka's dredged up in between listening to Kiyi's stories and trying not to get caught staring at that soft smile playing at Zuko's lips. There's plenty of fantastical and whimsical explanations to chalk it up to, but Zuko doesn't see his sister often, from what Sokka's gathered. And yet here Sokka is, intruding on this private and precious time where Zuko looks more unabashed than Sokka can recall—he's exponentially glad for the opportunity, but perplexed regardless. 

He shoves it down and focuses on making it the most quintessential pier day for not only Kiyi, but Zuko, too. He intends to keep his promise. 

It's a Monday afternoon, so the pier isn't nearly as crowded as Sokka's seen it, but it's also peak tourist season, so somehow Sokka ends up with Kiyi's other hand in his. He has no doubt Zuko would dare let her go for a second, but he's learning quickly not to protest Kiyi's demands—which is also why, despite the crowds, so coerces them into lifting her up and swinging her gently. Zuko does so with practiced ease, and Sokka distantly wonders who have been the people in the past to be in his position now. An image of the woman on Zuko's phone Friday night flashes through his mind, of Kiyi pushed up between the two of them. 

They walk the length on the right side once, swinging back up to hit the right, but Kiyi pulls them to a halt only a few paces forward. She lets go of Zuko's hand and tugs Sokka forward, into the low covered building tucked between the booths. 

"Look, look, Sokka," she says, using the hand not tugging him along to gesture at something somewhere just inside the building, and how she even saw it is a wonder and—Sokka laughs. "That's the one." 

Up behind the ticket booth is the ugliest Charmander stuffed animal Sokka's ever laid eyes on. It's a hideous shade of orange, stained on its stomach and with one of the poorly stitched on eyes scratched up. The little tail poof is ratty and stringy, and yeah, whatever romantic notions Sokka had winning Zuko an actual cute prize are abandoned when he sees the thing. It looks even better amidst the clean and nice looking prizes all around it. 

He looks down and Kiyi looks so proud, her hand still extended towards it like she knows what she's done, and Zuko's staring up at it, clearly barely containing a laugh, and yeah, it's coming home. 

"Sokka, no—" Zuko tries as Sokka breaks away and bolts over to the coin machine, shoving whatever coins and a few stray dollars into it without a second thought. Zuko's protests fall flat as his laughter breaks through alongside his sister, and Sokka smiles faced towards the machine so they don't see what a sap he really is. 

"Yes," he says as he turns around, scooping his obsequious amount of arcade coins into a cup. He picks one out and waves it in front of Zuko, grinning wide. "A thousand times, yes." He turns to Kiyi, and extends the cup to her. "Guard this with your life," he says, deadly serious, and her smile hardens our and she nods, features set and determines, and Sokka ruffles her hair before turning and booking it for the skee-ball machines. 

Sokka's nothing if not humble, and growing up both a geek and on the coast has left him with plenty of arcade experience—skee-ball being no exception. Between hasty matches of Street Fighter with Suki and laborious high score runs on Galaga, the bowling right up into Mar Vista nursed a healthy affinity for cabinets and skee-ball. He's nothing if not humble, but regardless, he's a skee-ball beast, and doesn't hesitate to make a show of it. 

All in all, it takes about 7 rounds, with a brief intermission in between to try and (unsuccessfully) coerce Zuko into dancing when Wallows starts playing over the crackly speakers, which is definitely a loss but Zuko gets all soft around the eyes when he spins Kiyi around a few times and she laughs brightly, which is most certainly a win. He files it away to rank in his top 5 Zuko smiles later. 

Kiyi has an armful of crumpling tickets by the time it's all done and over with, and Zuko still has a few spare tokens rattling around in the cup. He passes one to Sokka pointedly and Sokka watches as he tucks one into his jacket pocket. Sokka folds his arm over the coin, feels the cool metal dig into his palm and pushes down whatever false significance he's forcing into the action. 

~

Zuko, somehow, suckers Sokka into getting on the ferris wheel. Kiyi's apprehensive about the West Coaster, as she should be, because Sokka knows from experience that while technically sound it's still relatively terrifying. The Ferris wheel isn't relatively terrifying—it's insultingly scary, taunting him as the carts sway and teeter up at the peak from where they're queueing. Kiyi looks up with wide eyed excitement—Sokka nearly grabs the Charmander in her arms and runs. 

The queue grows shorter and Sokka grows wearier, but sticks it out because Zuko quietly admits alongside Kiyi that he's never been on a ferris wheel, which just feels astronomically sad despite Sokka's aversion to the monstrosities. 

"Is this a heights thing, a ferris wheel thing, or an amusement park thing?" Zuko asks as the board into the rounded carts. It tips inauspiciously beneath his feet, so he sits down and ignores the strange creaking and focuses on Zuko. 

"Freaking ferris wheels, man. They drive me crazy. Like, at least rollercoasters are fun—ferris wheels are just a laborious ascent where you have nothing to be but contemplate your imminent doom—"

"Imminent doom," Kiyi interjects, worlds curling around the words in a foreign way as he nose crinkles up. Sokka watches Zuko visibly soften, feels himself do the same, and watches as Kiyi curls herself up into Zuko's side. The ride starts moving, slowly and jerkily, and Sokka is explicitly not scared, just annoyed and concerned for the safety of Zuko and his baby sister. 

But still—once the creaking subsides into the hum of the waves and the rush of the coaster, a backdrop to the chatter of the hundreds just below them—the view is something, and maybe that merits the occasional trip on the death-trap. Maybe. 

It's a clear night, the sky just beginning to hue orange as the evening descends, and yet the coast still stretches on infinitely, fading away into blurred and filled shapes miles away on either side. He can see everyone on the pier and beach alike, can see little dots of color in the ocean catching waves and riding them out to shore. Can see further out to that infinite horizon that he's always chasing than he ever can on the ground—and that counts for something, at least. 

Especially when Zuko looks just as awestruck. 

Kiyi drapes over his shoulder, chin resting there as she looks out at the world, and Sokka wonders in vain what a world as saturated as theirs looks like to a kid. Wonders if the glaze in Zuko's eyes indicates that he sees the mystical like her or the literal like him. 

~

Kiyi's tired enough by the time the sun is starting to set that she surrenders herself to being carried on Sokka's back. Zuko's all soft around the eyes as he has been all evening, easy and peaceful in ways he so rarely is, but when Sokka looks over at him as Kiyi let's her head fall against his bouncing shoulder he's practically wet around the eyes. Sokka nearly asks—asks if he's okay, if he's doing something wrong, if, if, if—but Sokka's seen Zuko at his lowest, really. Has seen him soaring and sinking, and somehow knows without having to ask that this is somewhere closer to the sky than the earth. 

So he doesn't ask, and instead moves closer so that their shoulders occasionally bump against one another. Zuko keeps an eye on the two of them as they walk the last stretch of beach back down from the Venice boardwalk. After a while, Sokka chances a look his way, and he's hit with the overwhelming question of how he ever appreciated sunsets without Zuko in the foreground, illuminated and relaxed and so, so beautiful. 

Head tipped back and angled towards the sky, breaths long and deep as behind him the water cadences similarly, sparkling in that way that Sokka has never been able to fathom is real, blinding and yet alluring all the same. The ugly Charmander in his arms bounces with every step he takes. The sky is on fire, sharp paint brush strokes of the most vibrant reds and oranges softened by the blurred out pinks that shouldn't be able to occur in the world so commonly. 

His back vaguely aches from the weight, the sand wiggles it's way into the spot between his foot and shoe, and Zuko's shoulder hits his again. The arcade coin hits the keys in his pocket with a soft jingle. Somehow, the mundane in everything makes the moment all the more beautiful.

"I think that someone's got a crush," he says after a few more moments filled with only the crash of the waves. Sokka adjusts Kiyi on his back and quirks an eyebrow. Zuko casts a long and low glance Sokka's way, sluggish in the evening sun, and nods towards Kiyi. Sokka immediately wants to ask is she the only one? Is what's happening here really all in my head? 

Sometimes looking at Zuko tears him apart. But sometimes, the answers Sokka thinks will be concealed behind years worth of repression are out in the open. Like now. It's his eyes, Sokka thinks. When they're open and honest like this, bright and expressive and so, so warm against the fiery sky, Sokka thinks that with enough time he could find all the answers to the questions that keep him up at night. His scar is tight and strained across a beautiful amber eye. The answer there feels like one Sokka will never be privy to.

Sokka's barely breached the surface of what there is to see. He can see it in the easy smiles afternoons like this are graced with just like he can in the days shut away with no text, no call, nothing—the a churning sea of darkness Zuko shies away from, but within that there are streaks of light. The parts Zuko chooses to show him, even if he doesn't realize it—of who he's trying to be, and Sokka can work with it. 

Can feel frustrated and wrought at times, but doesn't need to know the whole story to know that the person before him is real, even if he himself can't see it yet. Even if it takes years, Sokka knows that in some capacity—in whatever capacity Zuko will take him—he wants to be there for every step of the way. 

The thought is nowhere near as terrifying as Sokka thinks it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah hi ily all I’m so sorry this is like 2 weeks late?? I legit wrote and rewrote this chapter 4 times over and just couldn’t get it right at ALL and I’m still not happy with it but like,,I think that this is as good as it’s gonna get for now and I also really want to give you guys something.
> 
> Kiyi was not done justice can’t believe I did her so dirty with this flat chapter smh, she WILL be back rest assured and it’ll be even better I promise you 
> 
> In other news: went back to in person school last week. I’m thrashed through and through, but will be home this coming week and am going to try writing as much as possible in between school work, so maybe (possibly hopefully) I’ll have some chapters in reserve when I go back again week after.
> 
> Thank you to all of you that stuck with this story. Honestly writing this chapter has been on my mind through all the crazy shit going on and I definitely wanted to update so much earlier. I’ve been proofreading this as I write it but it’s been Such a process that I genuinely apologize for any grammatical/continuity/timing issues. This kinda jumps around and switches perspectives a lot, but I hope it’s clear enough to make sense.
> 
> Love all you people and your relentless support, and I really hope that you’re all well. <3


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Santa Barbara, briefly. 
> 
> Eddie Vedder, and Sokka and Zuko talk. A lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, hi I’m back and I love you all and I’m sorry this took two weeks but also I lowkey love a lot of the dialogue in this chapter and hope that you guys do tooooo!!! :)

"You really don't have to come with, you know."

Zuko's been fiddling with getting the booster seat adjusted in the back of his uncle's car for far longer than Sokka would deem necessary, hovering over the open back door seat of his uncle's car. His hands keep going back, tugging aimlessly on the straps around a dozing Kiyi, and his eyes hardly leave her. He's not happy she's going back, Sokka brightly deduces. He's not happy, and there's not a chance that Sokka's revoking his offer to drive with him.

If asked, he'd chalk it up to the 2 hour drive. He'd say that he doesn't want Zuko on the road alone so late, even though Sokka's known Zuko to wander the empty streets of Venice downtrodden and vulnerable a few times over. If pressed, Sokka would admit that he really just doesn't want Zuko upset and alone, and is maybe hanging onto the last moments of the day, clinging desperately so it doesn't slip away so soon. 

Zuko doesn't ask, and certainly doesn't press. (And Sokka, for all that he questions what's happening between them, knows by his gaze that he doesn't want to be alone, either.)

"Yeah, I know," he finally answers, all the while resisting the urge to pull Zuko's hands into his own and calm him down from whatever flurry he has himself worked up into. "But I want to."

Zuko finally, blessedly stills his hands—pulls away with one last gentle brush of his fingers across her temple—and shuts the door behind him. 

"Did I ever tell you my uncle used to drive a Jaguar?" He says as he props himself up against the door, and Sokka falters. Whatever conversation he'd been expecting, whatever omission from Zuko about what had been troubling him, it was that. And Sokka can't keep a straight face as he tries to conjure the image of Baja wearing, Jerry Garcia inspired Uncle Iroh willingly driving a souped Val car. He laughs, and Zuko visibly relaxes, a small smile gracing his lips as he tosses the keys between his hands. 

"I hated that car," he says, and Sokka has to tamp down the immediate 'why' that his brain unhelpfully supplies and instead focus on the image. Mixes it in with the version of Zuko that Kiyi fondly recalled this afternoon, slick and wound, and wonders at what point they became so different. "I'll take the shitty Civic any day." 

And diversion tactic or not, when Zuko drops his fist against the metal roof and rounds the back to the driver's side, Sokka follows in suit and gets in the passenger side. Zuko adds nothing more to his point about his Uncle and Sokka doesn't ask, but briefly entertains the idea that maybe in Zuko's mind that detail means something more to him than meets the eye. 

~

Zuko is—for all the reckless shit he is wont to pull—a safe driver. 

He's not sure what he expected, but between Suki and his own fair share of arguably unheeding driving, he hadn't expected a cautious and abiding Zuko. He cruises the PCH with an exercised ease, 5 over the speed limit unwavering and steady handed. He casts short glances through the rearview mirror periodically, but Kiyi never wakes. Not through the stereo being at a high volume and accidentally blasting Fall Out Boy when Sokka first connects, not when Zuko's voice rises as the fire behind his point about the Evil Dead franchise requires emphasis. Not even when Sokka makes Zuko laugh so hard his good driving finally wavers at his co-pilot dance moves. 

Zuko is a good driver, but Sokka thinks he's an even better road trip partner. 

The thought has Sokka buzzing in his seat. He knows Santa Barbara lies a mere 90 miles up the coast and that they'll turn right back around and be back home, but still. Sokka never has been able to shake the resolute urge to run off into the night. Will always feel some draw to the unknown even in highs that follow unparalleled lows. It doesn't matter how good things are right now, how balanced his life feels for once—the prospect of just disappearing with Zuko is infinitely more enchanting. 

Zuko goes quiet when they're about 10 minutes out. The pinks of the purple sky have long since given way to the inky purples of twilight, but Sokka feels electrified despite this as he takes in his new surroundings. Zuko tackles the streets with an unfettered familiarity, and Sokka briefly wonders if this is where Zuko was before him and Iroh found their way to Dogtown. Wonders if he spent afternoons skating these warm streets, empowered and in charge by the feeling of growing up as Sokka's felt in Venice.

Zuko drives by the harbor, passes through a secondary strip that's lit up by the warm lights and buzzing amiably with nightlife. It looks like the sort of place the Jasmine Dragon could have originated, Sokka thinks, but he doesn't say it. 

"Hey, Sokka?" Zuko says abruptly, drawing Sokka from his wandering thoughts and back down to the acute fact that Zuko's been silent the whole time they've been in town. He looks over at him, eyes trained on the dark road before them, fingers tight on the wheel. "Thank you." 

Sokka raises an eyebrow, feels the still slightly manic energy from a subdued sense of adventure thrumming through his veins and grins. "What for?" He shakes his head, feels a huff of laughter break through. He's just happy to be here, really, at Zuko's side and in an unfamiliar town. Simply put—with his favorite person, a life not yet lived before him. 

Zuko casts a long glance his way, illuminated by the passing street lamps, and smiles back. 

"For today. For coming with me tonight and keeping me sane. For everything," he says, eyes back out on the road and flexing and un-flexing with the ebb of the song playing on the radio. "I—I think of my mom when I come back here. Makes me feel off, sort of. I don't know. But it's nice to not be alone."

"Yeah, of course," he says before the words can settle between them. Before Sokka can come to the glaringly obvious conclusion that, in part at least, Zuko's behavior isn't entirely due to his departure from his sister. That, as Sokka should aptly expect by now, there's a bigger picture in those sad amber eyes. "Thanks for letting me tag along," he adds as an afterthought, the words drifting away as the abrupt action of Zuko pulling onto the side of the road and putting the car in park force Sokka to look out the window. 

Sokka wishes they had more time on the road, that he had just more moments form the right questions in his mind and just a few more seconds to ask them. Zuko's timing is conspicuous, and the conversation dies off before it has any time to expand. Sokka focuses on the house in front of him instead of letting that thought gnaw his insides raw. 

The house is in a similar Spanish style to the ones they've passed on their way here, but much smaller and much cozier. The white stone is illuminated by the warm yellow yard lights, and the orange glow from behind the curtains of the front windows ooze a sense of cozy. It's landscaped well, full and luscious and so green in ways that many of the houses back home aren't. The garage door to the left is open, a modest black car half in and beyond that the tell-tale signs of a kid—old cardboard toy boxes, a broken down crib leaned against the wall, stacked totes with indecipherable sharpie on the side with visible pinks and purples pressed against their clear sides. On the pristine green grass, a small play-set lies in the open patch in the front yard. 

It's not what he expected, but he tries to imagine Zuko growing up here regardless. 

Zuko wordlessly gets out of the car, and Sokka's still looking at the house when he looks back and realizes he's got Kiyi out of the car seat and into his arms.

Sokka blindly follows, hands fighting with the door handle in his rush as he practically falls out of the car, making no note of it and his lost time as he rounds the side of the car to Zuko and Kiyi. Kiyi shifts in Zuko's arms and a flash of a pinched look crosses his face when she snuggles closer, but just like that it's gone. Sokka frowns, and busies himself with getting the car seat unhooked and slinging Kiyi's little pink bag over his shoulder. 

He hauls the seat up in his arms, looks over the top of the car and at Zuko's back, half illuminated now by the open front door he's obscuring that's pouring out light. Sokka narrows his eyes and rushes over to match Zuko's stride, and tries not to make it obvious how clearly he's taking in the man in the doorway.

A long face, handsome and sharp but with that deeply aged look, tired and hazy—he's dressed formally for 9 o'clock at night, maroon button up undone down two and black slacks slightly rumpled. His long hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail, facial hair trimmed and pristine as well, and yet he doesn't give an air of formality, hip against the archway and sleepy smile on his lips as he catches sight of Zuko and Kiyi. Then Sokka, who gets a momentary lapse of confusion before another warm—and now welcoming—smile.

Sokka chances a look Zuko's way, finds he looks uncomfortable, and quells down his confusion in favor of smiling over at the man, whose name is one eluding Sokka even though he knows that it has to be in his head somewhere. Sokka sets the car seat down and feels the first twinges of wrongness seep in around the edges. 

Kiyi stirs on Zuko's shoulder, blinks and rubs her eyes hazily, before frowning slightly. She turns her head, check pushing up against Zuko's, and the frown eases out when she sees her dad in the doorway. She shifts in Zuko's arms, makes no movement to get down, and starts waving as they make it up to the front porch. 

"Hey, Ikem," Zuko says under his breath, dropping down to his knees as he sets her down. He eyes stay trained on the spanish tile there, orange and warm under the yellow porch. Kiyi pads over and gives the man's—Ikem's—legs a tight hug in greeting, and when Zuko finally looks up he looks—he looks shy? Ikem smiles warmly and gives a slight wave of his hand in greeting. Sokka feels very aware of his presence in that moment, all of a sudden. "This is Sokka."

"He's an egg," Kiyi adds from against Ikem's legs, chin propped up on his knee to look at him. "And he's scared of ferris wheels." Ikem huffs a laugh, looks up at him and holds out a hand. Sokka shakes it, shooting him his patented teacher's pet smile. 

"Nice to meet you, Sokka," he says, and his voice is so, so deep it seems more like a rumble in his chest in the still quiet of the night. The quiet that Zuko is making no ever to dissipate, despite being the one bridge between it's inhabitants. 

"Yeah, likewise," he says, and their hands linger for a minute before dropping as the silence settles again. Sokka's about to start filling it when Ikem speaks up. 

"I just got in a few minutes ago, actually—do you guys wanna stay for dinner?" He asks, words as hesitant as Zuko’s shuffling feet. Sokka frowns, glances between them and watches. Waits, as quiet envelops them again, because Zuko just won’t talk, and the more it sits, the more Sokka just can’t figure it out. The words are on Sokka’s tongue, an acceptance of the offer because it’s the polite thing and just so it stops steeping between them, but as his mouth opens Zuko finally cracks. 

“N-No,” he says on a breath, before he pales slightly, and god, Sokka just wants to know what’s going on. Ikem doesn’t bristle when Sokka chances a look his way, just frowns slightly and this indistinguishable look overtakes his features. “I—I just mean, y’know, we’ve got a long ride ahead of us, I guess, and of course don’t want to intrude, and I’m sure that you’re really tired, too, and I bet Kiyi is also, so—“

Sokka watches with rapt attention—feeling so out of place and so, so intrusive—as Zuko flinches at the large hand that comes to land on his shoulder, as Ikem’s warm expression flickers at the action knowingly before schooling back into something soft. Reassuring. Kind. Zuko doesn’t relax under the touch, but neither of them move. 

“It’s okay. Another time, yeah?” He says with a nod and another one of those genuine smiles, closed lip and wide, eyes conveying something so off kilter the expression doesn’t hold. “You too, kid,” he adds with a look to Sokka, some of the hardness in his features soften into schooled welcome as his eyes leave his—his step-son? Is that what this even is? 

“Definitely,” Sokka says with a deep nod, just glad to have a valid reason to speak and stop feeling so clammed up. Zuko raises his gaze from the ground, finally, and looks first at Ikem, gaze holding for a moment as something in the air dissipates, before back down at Kiyi, leaned against the doorway and rubbing at her tired eyes. Zuko kneels, holds out his arms as Kiyi clumsily crashes into them, wraps her small arms around Zuko’s neck, and Sokka just feels his insides melting completely. She turns to Sokka next, tugs at the hem of his shorts until he complies and drops to the ground too, and does the same to him, arms surprisingly strong around him. 

“You’ll visit soon too, right?” She asks as they pull away, smiling sleepily up at him as another yawn forces its way through her tiny body. Sokka smiles and nods. 

“Of course,” he says, and rises up from the ground as Ikem scoops her up into his arms, pushing her hair back from her eyes as her head drops to his shoulder. 

“Don’t be a stranger, Zuko,” Ikem says after a beat, voice sturdy yet not too firm. Zuko looks up and spares him the first genuine look of the night, a tiny quirk of his lips, a ghost of the smile Sokka’s so taken with. “Don’t forget I make a mean lasagna.”

“How could I ever?” Zuko jests back, voice small and smile inward, but there. Sokka feels something burst in his chest as the shell cracks a bit again and he sees the boy laughing in the passenger seat and bopping his head along to Green Day again, and feels himself smile, too. 

Zuko says nothing else between farewells and the short trek back to the car, continues to stew in his quiet even after they’ve situated themselves in their respective seats. Zuko sits with his hand on the key in the ignition, car not yet started and gaze a million miles away where it’s fixed on the gauges in front of him. 

Sokka doesn’t sit well with the quiet, and it’s become a theme of the night so rapidly he’s about to just say the first thing that comes to mind—which happens to be about the distinctly phallicly shaped bush along the side of the house—when Zuko inhales sharply and starts the car, cutting the palpable silence abruptly. 

“I’m gonna explain—I’m gonna explain all of that,” he waves a hand towards the now closes front door, and Sokka watches a shadow pass past one of the cream colored curtains, “to you. I promise. But I just—don’t know how to yet.”

“Zuko,” Sokka says just for something to say, just because he feels like he’s been so quiet for too long, that his voice will just fail him if he doesn’t speak up. “Look, you don’t have to. You don’t owe me shit, you know that right?” And even if the strange expressions and stilted expressions will drive Sokka just as crazy as every other piece of Zuko he can’t understand, he means it. Zuko owes him nothing, despite the fact that the expression in his eyes indicates he’s brewing the opposite up in his mind. 

“I don’t wanna go home,” Zuko says instead of responding, and his fingers fiddle with the radio despite his phone not being connected to the Bluetooth and it being turned all the way down. Something to do with his hands, Sokka figures. Sokka doesn’t point out that they still have a 90 minute drive ahead of them before they’re home, and thinks that maybe Zuko isn’t talking about the short term. 

“..Beach?” Sokka offers because anywhere else that immediately comes to mind involves other people, and he’s not quite ready to let go of whatever fragile vulnerability Zuko’s settling into quite yet, even if it’s selfish. Zuko nods, a small smile overtaking the profile that Sokka tries not to stare at, before he nods. 

He wants to ask a lot about Santa Barbara. Wants to ask if his familiarity with these streets is due to his adolescence, if the brick of the sidewalk clicks beneath his skateboard differently than it does in Venice—if he really grew up here, why he ever left. 

But he doesn’t. He focuses on the changing slides flickering of the passenger side window, lets the breeze pull out strands of his ponytail and tries to listen to what it is that Zuko has playing on the radio.

“Hey, Zuko?” Sokka chances as the city starts to disperse and give way to the highway. Zuko hums, glances over at Sokka but stares out at the darkness pooling around them. The moon is so, so bright in the sky tonight it doesn’t seem real. “Can you even understand what he’s saying?” Sokka asks, gesturing vaguely to the stereo headset. Gritty guitars, high hat heavy drums and driving bass beneath it all—but Sokka has not a clue what the lead singer is saying, or why he’s singing it that way, so graveled and slurred. 

Zuko actually laughs at that, and it makes Sokka smile. He hadn’t intended the question to be tongue in cheek, but if Zuko thinks it’s funny, then that’s a different case entirely. 

“Yeah, I can,” he says after a few little puffs of laughter involuntarily escape him, and he goes to turn down the volume a few notches before continuing. “But a lot of people can’t. Here,” he says, tossing his phone from the center console to Sokka’s lap, unlocked and the Spotify album card staring up at him. It’s pink, big blocky letters across the top and hands clasped together in the center. “Put on Yellow Ledbetter.” 

Sokka searches it, casts a glance up at Zuko still smiling to himself and amused, and presses play. 

A sort of jaunty guitar lick fills the space previously occupied by incomprehensible singing, and Zuko sighs deeply at the first chords. It’s really cute, and Sokka has to physically dampen the urge to say so out loud by shoving his hands beneath his thighs. 

“I don’t think it’d matter if I didn’t know what he was saying,” Zuko starts in as the singing starts, the same voice coming forth against the gentle guitar and somehow even harder to decipher. And yet, it’s—it’s a nice song, really. He just doesn’t understand. “Like, this song is never performed the same way twice. For the most part the lyrics are purposefully unintelligible, but I don’t really think it matters,” he says, before just as quickly turning up the knob again. “Just listen.”

And so Sokka does. Listens as the lyrics sung jumble and cross over each other, voice deep and whole, and yet still strange to him. Sokka’s never heard music like this, is sure he hasn’t ever heard a song by this artist in his life, but as the drums come to play behind that pretty little guitar lick and everything builds around a hugely powerful chorus—maybe, on some level, he understands why the lyrics themselves don’t matter. It’s high and loud and powerful, even if he doesn’t know what the words are, there’s feeling and emotion, there. Which is great, and Sokka’s glad to have experienced it, but what really matters to him is what it is that Zuko feels when hearing this song. 

“I can feel what he’s singing about,” Sokka says as the drums back off again and something mutes the guitar slightly, mellifluous humming and elongated crows of emotion spur from deep within the music’s core. 

“Yeah,” and Zuko smiles over at him, tight-lipped and yet wide, and Sokka knows that even if there was no question, he got the answer right. “Me too.” 

Zuko tells him the band is Pearl Jam, and Sokka plays the whole album on the way back to Venice. 

~

Sokka stares up at the night sky, hears the lapping sound of the ocean and the ruffle of summer wind in his hair, and thinks about that one Incubus song Zuko's played for him a few times. Something about a canopy with holes poked throughout, stars shining down from some unknown expanse of light behind it. Lines of significance hidden in the lyrics of songs that he can't even remember the name of—yeah, that's right about where Sokka is right now. 

There’s something vulnerable about nighttime, Sokka thinks. Certain things that the light of day is too harsh to give way too are easier, softened out in a similar way that mistakes are to youth and adolescence versus adulthood. In the dead of night, lying side by side with your best friend that you’re more than a little bit in love with is somehow so much less formidable than it would be under the sun. 

Sokka shifts, and the sand beneath his hair does too. Sticks and readjusts, trails down the bit of shoulder exposed leading up to his hairline. He thinks of little crabs buried inches below them, holds back the urge to dig his fingers deep and search for them, and instead asks a question that is entirely laden in the euphoria of the moment around them. 

"Zuko," he says, keeps staring up at that canopy sky, the name of a boy he's known for not even a while season of their lives on his tongue making his lips tingle and his heart flutter. There's a hum, low and acknowledging, something that reminds him of that song in the car, and Sokka sighs, wiggles his way a bit deeper into the sand, and contemplates his wording. It's no use, in the end, because it comes out just as juvenile as he'd been trying to avoid. "Have you ever been in love?"

Zuko's quiet beside him as he has been for a while, and yet the silence feels poignant now. Feels forced instead of rhythmic, Zuko's stillness now acute instead of peripheral. 

"Think so. I called it love, at least," he says, and Sokka makes a soft hum of acknowledgment, takes it as a much more real answer than he'd ever expected from him when he’d asked. 

"When did you know?" He presses, wonders if kisses shared with strangers after football games and in the low lights of house parties equivocate to some sort of love tally. If one bright, sweeping romance freshman year—as defining and real as anything else in Sokka's short time on earth—can in any way have prepped him to tackle something as vast and unknown as his feelings for Zuko. "That you were in love. Do you think there's like, some secret feeling? Something we unlock when we get there, but are clueless about until it happens?"

Zuko's quiet again, but Sokka can see the even rise and fall of his chest, knows he hasn't pushed too far and evoked a rise too sharp. He's thinking, which is entirely reasonable, because Sokka has blindsided him with a deeply cutting conversation neither of them are equipped to tackle without at least a little bit of intervention. But there is none, so instead the crash of midnight waves acts as a mediator between the silence as Sokka tries not to panic about the dragging silence. 

"Somewhere in the staticky moments between the tracks of an old copy of In Utero," he says, voice drifting away into the night as instantaneously as the words are spoken. Something nostalgic, and bittersweet, and maybe partially secondhand, settles into Sokka's gut. "The quiet moments where the music occupying the space just—dissipates, and there's nothing but the sound of a familiar breathing pattern and the smell of something almost close enough to be home, and yet not quite enough. That's what maybe, almost being in love is like. So close, and yet not quite,” Zuko shifts, takes a deep and laborious breath, and shakes his head against the sand. “Maybe I wasn’t in love. And maybe there isn’t a secret. I think that we're supposed to believe that it's a secret—supposed to hold onto the notion that love is just another milestone like getting your license, graduating high school, first big boy job, selling your soul off to some fascist capitalist machine or other—"

"Nihilist." A huff of laughter. A moment like those in between the tracks. Something always, always unspoken. 

"It's the truth. I think that young love gets discredited because it's seen as another tick on a checklist and not—the thing, y'know? The thing," he repeats pointedly, waving a hand emphatically. "The thing that makes all the other bullshit worth it. It's why so many people break up prematurely, because it's not gonna get them the whole 9 yards. Or it's the opposite, and they marry just to tick off the marks of some kind of Hallmark life. Inevitably divorce and leave a destructive wildfire in their wake." Zuko takes a deep breath, and Sokka thinks about a shimmering white wig, of hospital walls just as white and a love lost too young. Wonders who it is that had Zuko so almost-in-love he found his pieces in the silence lying between sound waves. Wonders if he can ever measure up. Wonders, equally, what this person sized hole at Zuko's side did that so deeply cut his opinions on love into him. 

They're 17, and things aren't supposed to feel so complicated yet. They’re 17, and they’ll never be in this place ever again, which it’s Sokka like a fucking freight train barreling into his chest at 200 miles an hour. 

"I think that we're supposed to believe that it's a secret, but in reality, it's in front of us the whole time." He sits up, and Sokka watches in the bright moonlight as sand trails down his dark t-shirt, sticks in certain places and especially in the few strands of equally dark hair that hits his shoulders. 

"Do you believe that it exists?" Sokka asks without sitting up, because he can't bare the thought of sitting up and leaving this conversation with such a sense of finality and fatality. It's easier this way, somehow, observing Zuko from afar instead of with those endlessly sad eyes and that endlessly hopeful spark in them. 

"Love? Of course," he says, and Sokka meant those moments, meant the action of falling in love with a person without even realizing, or maybe even consciously seeking it out. His thoughts feel too jumbled to pick out the exact question he vaguely asked, but Zuko's answer to his interpretation in relation to his answers throughout the rest of this conversation pique Sokka's interest far more than they should. So he lets him speak, because for once it seems like he really, really wants to. Has been waiting for someone to ask the right questions. 

"But that doesn't mean it isn't all fake," he says, and he shifts slightly, draws a knee up to his chest. Phony, Sokka's freshman year brain supplies blearily. Holden Caulfield. "Most of it, anyways. You don't grow up with parents like mine and believe everything is as simple and rose colored as a Cameron Crowe movie. But that doesn't—but it's got to be real, right? Some of it, at least, and for some people all of it.” A long look over a thin shoulder, and Sokka props himself up on his elbows, feels the sand dig into the skin there and doesn't bother worrying about caring. The moon halos, bright and distracting, and Zuko is just as gorgeous in the moonlight as he is in the evening sun, as he is with his head tipped back on the beach in the mornings. He's just—he's just beautiful, and it's the furthest thing from superficiality he’s speaking of that one can get. 

"If it doesn't, then what the fuck is everyone doing this for?" Sokka supplies so eloquently after minutes of Zuko's distractingly poised prose. But a wide smile cracks Zuko's features, knocks at his little shell and brings forth fragments of the only 17 year old on the planet that Sokka thinks maybe understands the fear of being alone for the rest of their days at such a tender age the way that he does. "Everyone's chasing that thing, and it's different for all of us. But I think at the root of that—at the core of whatever it is that goes on that causes these sporadic neurons to bang around up here at will—" Sokka taps to fingers to his forehead, and Sokka does the same, slow and amusedly. "Has gotta be love. Has gotta be the broadest definition that we've got to explain emotion, right? Deep down, and for others in the surface, it's pretty universal." 

“We all wanna be happy,” Zuko says with a nod, and Sokka hums, wonders why he feels so drunk, or stoned, or otherwise inebriated in the sand. Is glad Zuko gets what he’s trying to say even if he doesn’t even really know. “And at some point, love becomes synonymous with happiness.”

“Are you happy?” Sokka asks before he can stop himself, and hopes that asking that in the context of their conversation isn’t too on the nose. But if it is, it is, and that will be okay. Has to be okay. Zuko doesn’t take time to deliberate as much as Sokka would have guessed. He tips his chin further toward the sky, the pales of the milky skin there soft and untouched under the moon’s rays. 

“Yeah. I am,” he says, and Sokka is nowhere near naive enough to believe that that’s the whole truth, has seen first hand the turmoil going on upstairs with Zuko, has even seen pieces of it tonight with Ikem. But, and this is the part that makes Sokka positively expansive, on some level that’s the truth. “Are you?” He shifts his gaze down and over, catches his eye and Sokka feels that expansive feeling in his chest clamp down, tighten and constrict around his heart and lungs. 

“Yes,” he whispers between them, and Zuko’s features somehow seem to both soften and harden, sadder and yet more real. There’s no good way to progress from here, Sokka realizes. They’re both too vulnerable to continue on like normal, and that vulnerability lends itself to an unease at the prospect of pushing the conversation further and past the point where it’s anything but forced. 

So Sokka rises, dusts the sand off of his shorts as best he can, and extends his hand down to Zuko. 

Zuko takes it, states up at Sokka through those long eyelashes with that pretty amber eye of his and says nothing. So many words have been exchanged, so much progress and yet somehow not at all made, and there’s just nothing left to say. Nothing left but to walk back to the car hand in hand, respective shoes in the other hand and the water behind them. Maybe, with anyone else, the pregnant moment would be melancholy. But with Zuko, it feels something like hope. 

Zuko offers his place up to stay at for the night once they’re back in the car, hands disconnected and reality firmly back in place. Sokka agrees, thinks the admittedly short distance back to his place too much for him right now, and Zuko puts the car in motion and leads them back down that same alleyway Sokka has first taken that afternoon he’d first started cracking the code on Zuko. The Zuko then and the Zuko now are rapidly blurring into one person, and that one person, Sokka thinks, is trying to find out who they are just as much as Sokka is. 

The lights are on behind the second floor curtains, and when Zuko tenses at the sight Sokka can feel all lingering bits of tenderness evacuate the car. His brows furrow, and his eyes stay trained to the light as he pulls off to the side right by the garage door, and it doesn’t leave as he stumbles out of the car rapidly, not even bothering looking back at Sokka as he rushes to tug open the door leading up to the second floor. 

Sokka isn’t sure what it is that’s caused the urgency, why the sight of movement and activity has sparked panic, but that doesn’t stop his own anxiety from spiking at Zuko’s reaction as he follows after him. 

And, it seems, for good reason too. Because when Zuko throws open the door that opens up into the main living space of the apartment, sat at the small breakfast table is Aang, a frozen bag of peas pressed up against his slack face, Iroh across from him as serious as Sokka has ever seen him, featured drawn and pained. There’re empty cups of tea scattered between them on the table as a pass of time, and when Sokka peers closer, the swollen darkness on his cheek and tears unshed in Aang’s eyes give him all the answers that he doesn’t want to know. There’s a distant ringing in his ears as things start to slot into their painful places, and Sokka thinks that Zuko sums it up best with his breathless and shocked: 

“What the fuck?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but when this fic was still like 5 chapters long and was gonna be like 8, I used to think that my skater Zuko was inspired by Nico Hiraga—but I have since realized that Nico ALSO reminds me of Sokka in this universe, so if you’re interested in what THAT looks like I’d def look him up—he’s a cutie and very sweet, and Zuko’s skating style is also in my mind influenced by him. Just, yknow, if you’re curious.
> 
> Random tidbit aside, hi!! I was doing such a good job of pacing myself and this chapter and was so on track, then school came out of nowhere last week with some major bs that put me outta commission, but hey, I still made it through, even if it’s 1:30 in the morning rn and I only proofread like half of this. I,,I don’t actually hate it for once.
> 
> Why, you may ask, did I pick Pearl Jam to be the band that crosses the bridge between Sokka and Zuko music tastes in this chap?? Hmm, I feel like I could come up with some underlying meaning, but I honestly just think Yellow Ledbetter is beautiful and evocative, and wanted to write about that. Bon appetit. 
> 
> Oh yeah, also shit is sorta about to hit the fan these next few chapters. So good luck with that? I’ll also go ahead and tell you now that in this chapter there was a deleted kiss that was almost left in—I’ll leave you to try and pick out where exactly it was ;)
> 
> I was driving home today and Champagne Supernova started playing just as the sun came out and a double rainbow crossed my path—happy national coming out day, ladies and gents and everyone in between or not at all. I hope that this chapter is as enjoyable for you as it is for me. Love you all, and as always thank you for your encouragement, patience, and support. <3 Until next time.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko reminisces. Lightning crashes, Iroh is the best, and Zuko has to work around his own raging emotions to sort out his next move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots and lots of allusion to child abuse here!! Also brief descriptions of a panic attack near the end, and fair warning Zuko handles things *kinda* poorly in this chapter, but he’s also dealing with a lot of unnamed and unbridled emotion for now, so he gets a pass. Tread lightly here guys, and stay safe. <3

Zuko still remembers his first cigarette. 14 years old, safety pins stuck into the seams of a heavy cashmere sweater and dragging himself through the motions of who he wanted to be, it'd been a casual offering in passing. An offer, no pressure or expectation, but he'd leaped at the opportunity to try. 

He remembers when the smoke first hit his lungs, hard and long, and how much it had hurt. How desperately he'd pushed through, because he wasn't what he was convinced that everyone said he was, and he wanted to show them. Because maybe by not coughing, not sputtering and nearly puking he could prove it, and no one would dare say otherwise. 

He'd done all of those things anyways, and yet nothing happened. He had been clapped on the back and jostled lightly—playfully—but it'd been fine. It'd been fine, and no one said otherwise anyways. Lee, with the long curls and sharp green eyes—all rough around the edges where Zuko had still been softened by delusion—had driven him home. Had passed him a lukewarm water bottle from the back seat of his old Tercel, and hadn't laughed when Zuko had grumbled, "My stomach still hurts." Even if it was 2 hours after the fact, and he knew deep down that by then the knots in his gut had less to do with the nicotine and more with the sight of the estate tucked behind the trees. 

"You get used to it," Lee had said regarding the cigarette, but his eyes were sad like they often became when it was just the two of them, something like a snuffed out flame, and it had made Zuko slouch down further in the cloth seats. Maybe slumped down enough, he would just melt away between the stained fibers of a car too rough to be anywhere near the Hills. He wonders if his new friends would miss him, or if he'd just fade off into a microscopic blip on their radar. "Or you don't. And that's fine, too. Whatever," he adds, and Zuko can't help the little smile that breaks through his glum mood. 

"'Whatever,'" he parrots back in Lee's purposefully careless tone, knows that this is him trying to be supportive while still keeping up whatever tough guy act he otherwise perpetuates, and it's funny. It's especially funny since Zuko's become a part of the joke. Lee cracks a grin, something too soft against the worn lines of his skin, and he's too young to look so, so rough, and it's sad, Zuko thinks. Sad because the look still makes something in Zuko's stomach twist, and because there are shadows of a softer person there, someone not just a product of their environment. Someone that drives 'punk-ass ankle biters' home at the drop of a hat regardless of the hassling from the rest of their friends just because Zuko felt sick. Someone that goes out of his way to drive him home at all. Someone that's still good, despite being raised in the shadows of the dark alleyways of the city. On the complete opposite end of how Zuko was raised, and yet with more heart than anyone Zuko's ever met. Lee and all of Zuko's friends, tough exteriors and all. 

The people society looks at and scoffs, but that took him in and showed him the ropes of rebellion with practiced ease. Dyed hair and piercings, fading stick and pokes and the smell of ditch weed. A burnout, a slacker, a nobody—somebody even 6 months ago Zuko would have turned up his nose at, but today feels more akin with than any sheltered rich kid or leeching fake friend he's ever had. 

"You're a little shit," Lee huffs and shakes out his hair, lets it pool in long, long ringlets down his shoulders. The ends are red this week, already fading and poorly done, but still faintly there. "Get the fuck out of my car, man," he says, pushes at Zuko's shoulder, and Zuko doesn't have time to bite back the laugh as it bursts from deep in his chest, exhaling easily where the smoke had not. He goes to tug at the old, sticky door handle as Lee stares down at his steering wheel and tries to purse his lips around a smile of his own. He doesn't laugh because he's tough, just as tough as Zuko is. Which says a lot, and somehow nothing at all. 

"See you tomorrow?" He asks, and hates the little waver in his voice, and the seed of doubt that makes him wonder, wonder, wonder when it is that the other shoe will drop and he'll no longer be welcome in the seedy parking lot by the abandoned CVS. If one day that parking lot will change as it did just a few weeks ago, and they just won't tell him. If when that day comes, it'll hurt as badly as it does every time he walks back through the foyer of the empty mansion not even 100 feet away. If it'll feel the same, or if it will be easier. Maybe even harder—but to Zuko, there's nothing worse than dragging himself back into that house every night. So maybe not. 

Lee rolls his eyes, lets his head loll towards the open window as Zuko leans against it, hands bracing against the spot, black nail polish that Mao had done earlier that night already blessedly flaking away. Zuko will have it picked off by the time he makes it up to his room and his father will never catch sight of it, but for now, when he looks down at it he feels the warm hands holding his close in the light of the street lamps. Lee laughing in the background and Kuzon saying something about sticking some cheap dye in his hair just for good measure. Tousled hair and sharp grins as he choked on his own tight breaths after a failed attempt at fitting in. Fitting in anyways, because society is wrong about the crowd he's running with, and nothing will ever convince him otherwise. 

"Duh, dummy. Mao's gonna kick your ass if you keep showing up without a board, though. I'm this close," Lee holds his fingers up, just barely touching, right in front of Zuko's nose, and Zuko immediately swats them away, "to breaking the seal and telling them you're nestled up here," he waves his hand towards the window, "and still bumming skates off of us every night. This close, Zuko—this close." 

And he's joking, Zuko thinks, but still he pales. He thinks about how they all know, at least on some level, that he's not one of them—and it's so clear—but how would that change if they knew just how different he was? Just how much he doesn't belong—

"I'm kidding. Quit wigging, prince Zuko. Your secret's safe."

And it is, at least for the moment. His secret life in the top percentile is hidden away from his secret life on the streets, and as the paint flakes away from his fingers and the safety pins get tugged out of his sweater, he slips back into this 'prince Zuko', this stranger occupying his body half the time. And yet where the group's nickname for him evokes warmth and something like acceptance, the future of a corrupt enterprise in his hands—of turning out just like his father—strikes a lingering chill that makes him pause on the pristine grass. 

Makes him pause, look back at the Tercel's headlights still static beyond the bushes concealing the mansion, and wonder. 

Being 14 shouldn’t be so formidable. 

His father isn't waiting up for him when he hoists himself up through his bedroom window, which is a something of a blessing, and he’s long since stopped expecting anyone to know how often he comes and goes—so long as he doesn’t get caught, it doesn’t become a problem. The house is silent, the distant hum of an AC unit and the sporadic tap of branches against his window the only white noise. The dullness of it settles in deeply against a night so loud and sharp, laughter and raucous anarchy. 

He remembers his first cigarette, and remembers Lee's kind words and smile long after he realizes what the warmth in his stomach at these actions really meant. Long after he realizes it's a crush that makes his stomach hurt and his chest ache, a crush on a boy nearly 3 years his senior and borne of completely different blood, that he can't help but gravitate towards regardless. He remembers it long after he stops hanging out with Lee, Mao, and Kuzon and starts hanging out at the actual skatepark just far removed enough from the old parking lot that he doesn't have to deal with the shame of his feelings. And it's there that he finds himself in a whole world of trouble. 

Trouble that is new, and exciting, and named Jet. 

Trouble that takes one look at him, unlit cigarette perched between curved lips and eyes shining in a way that Zuko knows is about to be a big, big problem, and says: 

"You get all of those bruises from skating?"

And his voice is sharp where Lee's had been soft, his jabs hit closer and when he gets mad, he goes in for the kill. But his lips taste like the adrenaline after a scuffle, and his hands guide Zuko through the ropes of the wrong side of rebellion without a second thought, and it is nothing if not whirlwind in every sense of the term. Jet takes the question of who he wants to be and forces him in a direction that he's teetering on, and Zuko convinces himself that it's what he needs. Before he even lays a finger on Zuko, he’s hooked on the feeling—obsessed with the insurrection that comes with feeling like you’re tearing the world apart when really all you’re unknowingly doing is ripping apart your own insides. Before Jet’s lips even meet his, there is a false sense of liberation in his presence that’s addictive. 

Zuko goes up from there, floats upward and onward and ignores the nagging in the back of his brain as things get worse at home and better away. Ignores the fact that things aren't really better, are just so bad that he's so abjectly pretending they're good so he doesn't have to think beyond how he can spend as little time at home as possible. How he can stretch the nights longer and longer with Jet and his blood orange sunset kisses that never make it to the morning, can settle into the person that he's becoming, because even if he doesn't like him, he doesn't look in the mirror anymore and see his dad. He rises higher and higher, burning and bright, until soon enough his inevitable fall strikes him down swift and hard and above all unmerciful, all the way back to square one—a stark scar tainting his newborn soul when he wakes up in a hospital bed surrounded by men in stuffy suits and his uncle's sad, sad gaze bearing into him.

~

The same gaze Zuko remembers from the hospital carves uncle's tired gaze now, and Zuko doesn't even have to ask to know what's going on here tonight. He can see it in the nuances, in the way that Aang won't look at him, and the way that it's so silent that everyone seems to be holding their breath. The way that the shadows conceal the answers blooming across Aang's tender cheek. Zuko notices that maybe he's right about everyone holding their breath around the time that Aang's eyes finally leave the table and meet his, and he feels the air clogged up in his chest expel sharply. 

And he can't see anything but himself, as selfish and horrifying as that thought is in that moment—can only see the sadness in Aang's eyes, the hope normally nestled there fighting for dominance against unrelenting despondency. Thinks of a faceless monster in Aang's corner, with a face shadowed like Ozai's and a disembodied voice that is paralyzing. Wonders, briefly, how horrifying it was for Aang to show up here looking for him and be met with an impossible situation. 

To tell, or conceal. Zuko knows what he would have picked, and knows what it is that Aang picked. What he doesn't know is where to go from here. 

"I'll kill them," he breathes after a beat, voice low and fragile against the endless quiet, because it's true. He bites it down, bites the rage boiling his blood down and tried not to let it show, focuses on ignoring the shake behind his eyes and ringing in his ears. Because once he acknowledges it, once he lets it go, it'll bulldoze him completely, and he'll be no use to any of them. Aang shakes his head, looks back down away from Zuko crestfallen, and Zuko feels something deep and primal in his heart absolutely shatter when he whispers:

"I didn't want to upset you."

And the anger doesn't subside—not at all, not even close—but it lets something else take the wheel. Something unnameable, and almost entirely new, that feels like 10 tons pressed right on top of his chest, squeezing the tears from the corners of his eyes. Anger let’s this new pain rip through him and lead him straight into Aang, let’s him wrap his arms around him as tight as he can manage and not let go.

The memories come in vague flashes, feelings instead of images. Big hands, sharp eyes. Bruises inside and out, alone in a secluded corner of a house oppressively huge. He feels it, lets it fester and burn through his heart and Aang winces slightly against his embrace, before forcing it down and focusing on the task at hand. 

His knees hit the worn tile below him, pulling Aang down with him as desperate arms come up around his back, close and tight but steady, somehow. It may been an act, of Aang just may be the toughest bastard to walk the face of the Earth. Aang’s face buries in his shoulder, and Zuko tugs at the worn fabric at his back. Slowly, Aang’s words begin to process in his mind as he holds him, and god, Zuko needs to be the strong one here. Needs to push through whatever bullshit is is that’s clawing at him right beneath his skin and push forward. For Aang, he thinks he can do it. At least for now, and that has to be enough. 

“That’s bullshit,” Zuko finally manages as he pulls away slightly, hands still on Aang’s shoulders as he looks at him, long and hard. Grey, unwavering eyes—not even red rimmed or glassy. Resigned. Zuko wants to break everything in sight and proceed to burn down the world. Instead, he moves his hands up to either side of Aang’s face, touch feather light against the bruise. “Fuck this. You’re not going back, okay? Never,” he says inadequately, and he doesn’t even recognize his own voice beneath the fluctuations of his feels, can’t understand how Aang is smiling at him against his touch. 

“I know. Your-your uncle—“ Aang falters, and so close like this, inches apart, Zuko can see the storm. Sees the way Aang can’t work around that last bit of the sentence and the way his eyes screw shut. When he opens them again, something about the low, buzzing kitchen light makes them look so, so tired. Zuko thinks about what could have happened had they never met—if Aang would be in the same shape Zuko had been in a year ago, or in Sokka’s living room right now—Sokka.

Zuko lets his hands fall to rest on Aang’s shoulders, turning to crane his gaze back at Sokka, quiet and unmoving, still in the doorway where they’d first entered, blue eyes impossibly wide and one hand up around his mouth. Realization has long since dawned on his face, and the expression in his eyes makes Zuko shudder. 

“Hey.” Aang tugs at Zuko’s sleeve lightly, and he jolts his attention back to him, words he hasn’t yet thought of on his lips, but Aang shakes his head, beats him to it because somehow, unfathomably, out of the two of them he’s the one that has a better hold on himself. “I’m okay now, but—just talk to him, okay? I—I don’t wanna go through it all again. Please?” 

And Zuko can’t deny Aang anything on a good day—wouldn’t, anyways—so he drags himself off of the cold tile, purposefully avoids his uncle’s gaze as he crosses the room over to Sokka, reaching out and tugging at his sleeve to bring him along after him and crossing the living room to the level’s fire escape. 

The soft fabric of Sokka’s sleeve is still between his fingers when he jimmies the window shut behind them, and he quickly let’s go in favor of wrapping his arms around his waist. 

“You’ve—you’ve known,” Sokka says after what could be 10 seconds or 10 minutes passes. Zuko can only nod, ringing in his ears louder and louder as he stares down at their shoes. “For a while,” he continues, voice tighter and more strained than Zuko’s ever heard it. “How long?”

Zuko waits, sees if he’ll be able to gather his thoughts together in a sensical manner before speaking, until he cracks. 

“He first told me at that first party at Suki’s. Before we were even friends and I just—I didn’t think anything of it. And-and then he showed up here one night—that night before the derby match—and came clean. And he, he told me not to tell anyone—not even Uncle—but Jesus fucking Christ, I messed up, didn’t I? I should have said something—could have fixed this, or-or at least stopped it before it got worse, but I didn’t wanna betray his trust, and I know how hard it is to tell people—“ Zuko clamps a hand over his mouth, resists the urge to bite down on it in an attempt to quell down the pulsing anxiety at his temples. Fuck. 

“Stop, hey—Zuko will you just..will you just fucking look at me?” And he can’t—because really, this is his fault. He knew this whole time, maybe not all of it but enough to know what was up. And then tonight, he was out, what? Professing his love to Sokka under the stars while Aang sat in his empty apartment going through the ordeal of another person finding out? And yet Aang is the strong one, still—asking one thing of Zuko in filling Sokka in, and he can’t even do that right, either. So no, he won’t look at Sokka, because he’ll either cry or break something, and he needs to hold it together just a little longer. “You could have told me,” Sokka says, voice a whisper between them, and if he didn’t have such a firm grip on the railing, it may be enough to send him over the edge. 

“That’s not fair,” Zuko says, shakes his head because Aang explicitly asked him not to—and why does Sokka have the right to expect him to betray that trust? It’s over, now, and they have to deal with the aftermath—but god, hearing what a flaming piece of shit he is from Sokka is not helpful. “That’s not fair, and you know it. He—he told me not tell anyone, and I didn’t, and what happened tonight happened, whether we stand out here and argue about it or not—“

“Why don’t you be fair to yourself for a change? Aang clearly isn’t blaming you, and you don’t have to shoulder this—I can help, we can all figure this out together—“

“Go home, Sokka,” Zuko interrupts, because he can’t let Sokka try to talk him into the fact that this is okay. Because Aang doesn’t deserve any bit of this, and Sokka doesn’t deserve to be wrapped up in it. If nothing else, he knows his uncle has experience with this, will handle it and make sure everything is okay, but he doesn’t have time to have this pseudo-fight with Sokka when Aang is in the other side of that wall, probably terrified and unsure despite the brave face. “Get some sleep. Call me in the morning when you wake up and I’ll update you, I promise. Okay?” He can’t stand how clipped his voice sounds, how short and strained it is as it claws up his throat, but with each second out here, everything builds more and more. 

He hears Sokka exhales, something more a sign of exasperation than anything else, and still doesn’t look up. Finally, Sokka shifts on his feet and speaks again. 

“Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, and Zuko knows that Sokka’s going to go home, stare up at that glow-star speckled ceiling and wait until enough time has passed to warrant calling. Knows this, and yet needs a couple hours to get it together anyways, so he doesn’t budge. “Just—nevermind.” 

Zuko only looks at him when he retreats down the steps, shoulders hunched up tight and posture so abnormally tense. Zuko has half a mind to toss the car keys still in his pocket down so he doesn’t brave the night alone, but before he does so the realization that dawn is creeping up from behind the horizon hits him like a truck. Sokka on the beach feels years ago by now, something unnameable breaking between them as he treads the path down the alley, and the saddest part is that Zuko doesn’t even have time to mourn it, not with everything else going on only feet away. 

He crawls back through the window, and continues pushing down the monster gnashing it’s teeth from within his chest. 

It’s still unbelievably quiet, but when Zuko surveys the room, Aang is no longer at the kitchen table and Uncle is washing dishes at the sink. Zuko isn’t sure where the sudden urge to collapse has come from, but dragging himself to the kitchen is an treacherous effort. 

“Hey,” he says, and his voice cracks so sharply it hurts. Uncle jumps slightly, sets the last tea cup on the drying rack and turns to face him. He looks throughly exhausted, face carved and worn and braced against the counter he looks about as close to collapse as Zuko feels. Must bring up unwarranted memories for him, too, Zuko thinks blearily. “Where is he?”

“Trying to sleep in the guest room. More likely just trying to rest,” he answers, and rubs a hand over his face long and hard. Zuko leans against the counter across from him. The light is still buzzing. Zuko doesn’t know what to say, and luckily Uncle has enough steam left to give him something to work with amidst all the questions that he wants to ask. “Zuko. You have to let me handle this,” he says, and his voice is so low and serious, Zuko leans back further into the kitchen so he doesn’t fall away onto the floor. 

“I—I should have said something,” he chokes, and feels something wet and warm slide down his cheek, reaches up quickly to brush it away and losing his balance leaned against the counter. Somehow, uncle catches him and draws him in close against his chest. His arms wrap around Zuko’s shoulders, and Zuko shifts his weight there, instead, and sinks into it. 

“This is not your fault,” he says, but it doesn’t matter, because even if it’s not directly, he could have fixed this, or stopped it sooner. “He told me that he didn’t want anyone knowing. You wanted to protect him—and you did your best in a tough situation. And I’m proud of you, just as I’m proud of him, for being so strong.”

Letting go of uncle to wipe his tears would mean losing his grasp on the fabric of his t-shirt, which feels something like losing his grasp on everything. So he doesn’t let go, and let’s his emotions have this brief moment to wreak havoc on them. 

“It’s not fair. He’s a good kid—he didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t deserve it—“

“He’s not going back, nephew. That I promise,” he says to cut him off, and Zuko knows that, but whose to say that wherever he goes next won’t be worse? He hazily thinks of dark eyes at the skatepark, hollowed out by yellowing bruisers and exhausted from months switching homes. Thinks of Jet, bouncing in between juvie and the Haven for Boys in the city, and the toll it had taken on him. Thinks that not everyone is lucky enough to have an Iroh to take them in. “Try to get some rest. We’ll all talk in the morning, yes?”

And Zuko isn’t sure how he makes it through half-hearted affirmations and up the two flights to his bedroom, but one minute he’s in his Uncle’s arms , and the next he’s cradling the fist that he’s just hurled into the wall and biting back his sobs in the middle of his bedroom floor. 

Everything is too much, so much so that he can’t even pinpoint all the things that are making him so crazy he’s about to crawl out of his own skin. The lights are too bright, the sounds from outside too loud, and he can’t breathe—not at all. 

He pushes himself back out onto the fire escape, takes the crisp morning air in as best as he can, and digs his hands deep into the iron bars to ground him in reality despite how much he doesn’t want to be there. Time feels so insignificant in situations like this, but soon enough he can almost breathe steady enough again, and his hands stop shaking so that he can reach behind him and pull the loose brick from the facade of the building away and get out his secret supply. The half empty pack of cigarettes still rests there, little green butane lighter pushed into the Ziploc bag as well. 

It’s an unfriendly sight, one out of desperation, but as he drags the smoke into his lungs, something like the illusion of control washes into his as the smoke drifts up towards the sky, and he gets to work separating out the chaos in his head and trying to make some sense of it all before Aang wakes up, Sokka calls, and Iroh and him have to formulate a course of action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is technically only part one of a bigger chapter (where a lot more gets sorted and emotions are better handled) but I’ve got the week from hell ahead of me school-wise and wanted to post part one until I can get the bigger chunk written out. I’m uploading this fairly late when I should be going to bed and therefore have only proofread about half of it, so PLEASE comment any grammatical/continuity errors you see and I’ll go back and fix them. 
> 
> So, the first 1000ish words of this chapter? An abbreviated excerpt from the prequel, so yeah. Lee, Mao and Kuzon are the OCs from my that fic, and what started as a minor plot point because a major attachment, and now I love them sm. Even if they’re brief here I hope that you guys enjoy the first little bits of them. Lee is making a return from chapter 10 to visit us with his presence here—hopefully drawing the connection between the first cigarette in the beginning and the one smoked at the end makes it work right? Right?? (PS—for the sake of some semblance of canon in this fic, the Kuzon in Zuko’s old friend group actually does know Aang, and there’s an allusion to that that I’m wondering if anyone picks up on here ;) )
> 
> Something else underway that I’ve been meaning to do—all of the chapters are going to have titles from songs that I associate with the chapters!! Idk when I’ll have that all done, but I have it mapped out and just have to go back and do it now, so if that interests you maybe come back and be on the lookout for it within the next couple of days?
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope that you enjoy this chapter and have a beautiful and stress free week. <3


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang reflects on where he’s been and where he’s going, and has a tough conversation with Zuko. 
> 
> Zuko weaves himself into a web of blame and scorching memory, and seeks something to take away the pain gnawing him from the inside out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> General content warnings: this is a pretty heavy chapter. Lots of allusion to abuse and damn near (albeit non graphic) real time descriptions of it are a pervading plot point, as well as brief and non descriptive suicidal ideation, drug reference, and overall relatively bad decision making and coping. Stay safe, friends, it’s getting heavy.

Aang used to have a journal—a pathetic, ratty little leather bound thing from the thrift store—and somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10, that journal became just as sad in the inside as it was on the outside. 

Three displacements in, and Aang started keeping track of the things he thought were maybe what so unloveable about him. It started with his parents, from birth up until his removal from their custody at 7. Objectively, they could have been worse, and the only real problem was that they would always pick their vices over him, would always love the escapism more than their own son. And it wasn't okay, he knew, but at least it wasn't entirely about him. There was just something more important, and if he'd been a few years older, he probably would have known the right things to say to stay in their care. 

Their was the distant uncle he'd never met, with his trailer on the outskirts of Sacramento that was so far from the coast he didn't see the ocean for weeks. The trailer court had a small fenced in pool, and even though the people that hung around it late at night weren't friendly, they were certainly more amiable than those in and out of the house. Aang made himself scarce, but the situation didn't last, and Aang would hedge his bets in the man deciding that the supplemental government check wasn't worth the ordeal of having a kid around—had he been keeping track at that point, Aang would have marked himself down as 'inconvenience' for that situation. 

After that, the first foster home—a dodgy craftsman house just outside of Glendale. The kids had been rough, but they let Aang read his library books in the corner in peace for the most part, and the resident adults had clearly just wanted the stimulus checks. Still, there was dinner on the table and they had little to say about whatever the ten-some kids got up to during the day. It was fine, for a while, but slowly the bottles by the backdoor starting piling up, and eventually one of the older, scarier kids took it upon themselves to flag the family, and just like that Aang was scattered to the wind, bouncing around with nothing but the clothes in his backpack and the worn journal in his back pocket, until he wound back up by the water, nearly 300 miles from his hometown but, for once, safe. 

He made his first friend sitting in the chill of November, shrouded in the darkness of the porch of a too large, too worn bungalow. He’d been tucked onto the creaky porch swing, staring at the stars and thinking about a distant future, and had been half asleep when a figure at the end of the driveway had nearly given him a heart attack. Huge and looming against the moon, a longboard tucked under one arm and a thick paperback dangling from his fingertips, he found a protector and confidant, always with a ruffle of his hair and word of advice for whatever pinch Aang had gotten himself into. At night, he was gone, but sometimes Aang used to wait up for him, and could fall asleep staring up at the same, oppressive sky, somehow more amenable tucked against his best friend. If nothing else, for a while Aang had Kuzon. It didn’t last. 

He was 11 when Gyatso had taken him in, and with fruit pie and proverbial wisdom, he had been the first adult Aang had ever trusted. That, too, didn’t last. 

~

When Aang wakes up, for some reason the thought of the journal is the only thing on his mind. The faces of its contents swirl around his mind, all half fuzzy and convoluted in their age and repression, but leaving a heavy pressure on his chest that seems to push him down further into the twin size mattress. 

He recounts the past 12 hours—the pervading smell of alcohol combined with a knowingly heavy handed man, a half baked evasion plan resulting in a sloppily landed punch. Thoughts of Zuko, heavy eyed and as private as can be since the first moment Aang had spoken to him, somehow coveting more unspoken solidarity in the few shrouded late nights they've shared than anyone in Aang's entire life—because of this understanding, selfishly moving by his own accord, Iroh meeting him at the door with a striking gaze. Somewhere along the way losing his resolve and abandoning his apprehension. Zuko and Sokka, wind blown and smiling, and Aang immediately sucking whatever had finally transpired between them from the air with one look. 

Everything was smeared and muddled like wet paint, all up until now, staring up at a plain ceiling in a dark and nearly vacant guest room. Adrenaline, maybe. Running on instincts and glossing over the parts his brain is trying to protect him from. His eyes blearily start to adjust as more time passes on in the silence, glued to the bed as his head spins and whirls. Because what happens next? 

The panic that crawls up his throat at that thought is enough to will him to shoot up out of bed, head throbbing and heart racing. He screws his eyes shut, rubs at them something fierce despite the pain that bursts across his cheekbone when his knuckle bumps the sensitive edge of his bruise. He wonders how he's supposed to face the world in the morning—wonders how in the world he's supposed to wake up and perpetuate positivity when the only thing on his mind is how desperately he wishes he could sleep away this chapter of his life. Wake up somewhere different, where smiling and laughing is as easy as he tries to pretend it is. 

He wishes he could wake up and hit the ocean. Wishes tomorrow, everything would just go away, and he could bug Zuko at the Jasmine Dragon before dawn patrol and laugh alongside Sokka at his grogginess in the morning. Wishes he could bump Katara's hand as their feet beat against cool morning sand, not yet wholly touched by the sun's warmth, and wishes above all that he could watch the sun make its crest on a new day, a fresh start, something unburdened with the only people in the world that matter. 

Nihilism sits on his conscience as heavy as his anxiety, one as familiar as the ocean and the other as fresh as the bruise on his cheek. 

He throws the blankets up onto the bed from around his restless legs and swings himself over the side of the it. He braces himself against the edge, stares down at the worn wooden floor, and tries to plan out his next move. The problem now, it seems, is he's been found out. 

Telling Zuko about his predicament was hard, but it wasn't so much of a gamble. Aang's always harbored his suspicions, and has seen a patchwork of red flags piece together over the course of their friendship that made his once presumptuous conclusion well founded. Simply put, Aang trusted that Zuko wouldn't tell anyone because Zuko himself is a coveter, and moreover would offer understanding rather than falsely baited solutions. Which was what he unequivocally needed at the time. 

But now it's so much more complicated. Zuko knowing was one thing, but now Iroh knows, which brings another dangerous piece into play—adults. Adults, who have done nothing but shuffle him from home to home ever since his druggie parents got themselves declared unfit. It doesn't matter if it's Iroh, with the constant reassurances and that ever-present welcoming smile; doesn't matter because what really can Iroh do to help him? Call the agency? Call his foster parents? 

Zuko's tight lipped, Aang knows, but Sokka was there, Sokka saw, Sokka is relentlessly sharp, and most importantly, Aang heard their raised voices on the fire escape. Which means that there's no way he doesn't know, regardless of if Zuko actually told him anything or not. Sokka knows, and Sokka could easily tell Hakoda with the intention of helping—or worse Katara—and muddy the waters even further. 

Nothing about the current predicament hurts worse than the knowledge that this all could have been avoided had Aang not been a rash idiot and turned to Zuko in the first place. He could've handled things—had been handling things just fine for the most part, but had just..run out of steam. Had grown weary of smiling and bouncing around to avoid the gnawing, acidic burn behind his eyes, and had a momentary lapse where it was too much. 

Enter Zuko, with his understanding eyes and implicit words that made Aang falter and wonder. Wonder if because Zuko had made it out, he could, too—and then he'd gone and made a bigger mess out of everything, like always, and ruined it. So now he has to face the truth: that because of his childish hope, he may be separated from the only real family he's ever know—and that stings worse than any bruise or cut, which just enforces what he already knew. 

That he could have stuck it out and kept going, and if he had, he wouldn't be at the risk of losing his friends, who are infinitely important than a shitty foster family he was more than capable of dealing with. 

He forces himself to his feet, feels the room sway beneath him and tip a bit, and steadies himself against an old wooden dresser. The bedroom door creaks when he pushes it open, striking through the static apartment so sharply it sends a jolt down his spine. He cracks it just enough to get out and slips through—plans to run, maybe. Hitchhike up the coast instead of down to throw them off of the pattern he usually follows, or maybe find a way to get a bus ticket up to Glendale again where he knows the streets, landlocked where no one will expect him to go. 

The curtains lift and float around loftily in the living room, and for the moment it's enough to draw Aang from his half baked plan. He watches as they dance in the evening breeze, mildly illuminated by the stars, but they catch just enough of the wind to push backwards and reveal a dark figure hunched over the iron railing of the fire escape. Aang watches smoke trail up to the sky as he takes a few steps closer, watches as the glowing red ember sticks out in the night, unbothered and withering away without use. 

"Please don't," Aang hears softly against the breeze, words carried by the same wind fighting to drown them out. He steps forward again, knows now he's been caught, and that turning back would be a blatant acknowledgement of that. "You're thinking about running, right?" Zuko elaborates, shooting a look over his shoulder as Aang tugs aside the curtains to look at him fully. 

Zuko somehow looks both younger and older in this light. Hunched over against the iron and utterly downtrodden, stamped out youth tugs against his harrowed features hauntingly. His shoulders seem to curve under the weight of the world, and the wind blows his hair back to expose where vulnerable, porcelain skin devolves into absolute carnage. His eyes almost glow the same ember as his lit cigarette, and when his cheeks hallow around a deep drag, he almost looks like a skeleton. 

You did this, something whispers in the shadows of his mind, clawing with sharpened nails against the developing pounding in his head. 

"Uncle left," he says, turning away from Aang and resting his forehead against the railing again. His eyes flutter shut, long lashes falling against rough skin, and he looks as far from peace as is possible. Hesitantly, Aang lowers himself onto the window ledge to sit at his side, more than half inside and ready for a quick escape if need be. "Does it help if I tell you that he'll figure this out or make it worse?"

"Neither," Aang answers immediately, and he finds that it's true. 

"Does it help if I tell you that—that on the off chance that he doesn't, you and I will steal the car and run away together?" 

Aang traces Zuko's languid movements. Watches the hazy way his long fingers rise to his lips, and the way his eyes droop around his inhale. It all looks so laborious, so tiresome and played out, and every newly ignited spark in Zuko is snuffed out. The thought breeds a nearly incapacitating guilt, but he can't help but think it makes it a lot easier to be more real with him. He's not expecting anything—well, it's more likely he is. But what he's expecting is the same thing that Aang is giving him. The same thing Aang presumes Zuko himself falls victim too, and it's the crushing, debilitating numbness that comes when the walls start caving in. 

Adrenaline dissipated, panic a mere bind around his heart, the only thing left to do is let life throw him around some more in whatever direction it plans to. 

Zuko isn't expecting the person Aang strives to be, and with one look—one harrowed, battered gaze and downturn of his lips—tells Aang all he needs to know. He collapses against Zuko's side, lets his body limp against the warm, strong one of his best friend, and lets all built up expectation fade away. 

"What about Sokka?" Aang asks, and isn't sure what exactly it is he's really asking. If he's asking about Zuko's backup plan or everything else, maybe somewhere in the middle or both at the same time. The body beside him sighs heavily and surrenders itself to another long drag, and usually the smell of smoke has too many attachments, too many once familiar faces distorted and carved out by nightmares, but for the moment, it's comforting. Something distracting and pretty as he follows wispy tendrils towards the endless abyss above them. 

"What about him?" Zuko huffs, running a hand though his hair as he leans away from the railing and slumps himself back against the brick of the building. Aang follows right along with him. 

"Tonight. What happened with you guys?"

"That's seriously what you're concerned about right now?" Zuko murmurs with a humorless laugh, bottom lip tugging up into his teeth as he angles his gaze up towards the stars. "Nothing," he finally says, voice hollowing out around the lie as he shifts forward and leaves Aang slumped against the wall on his own. He pulls himself back towards the iron and sticks his legs through the gaps in the bars, dangling his bare feet over the alley. "Something, maybe. But it doesn't matter—"

"It does to me—"

"Aang, it's not your fault."

"How can you say that? Of course it's my fault, Zuko! It's my fault for dragging you into any of this anyways, because even though I knew you were—you were like me, I still made you lie about it. Made you carry it around with you and didn't even tell you—"

"Shut up and listen to me for a second," Zuko interrupts with a wave of his hand, and his words don't hold half the venom that Aang assumes Zuko thinks they do, but it's enough to stop him. His chest heaves against the dawning realization of everything, lungs catching around the truth he can't hide anymore, the regret he can't run away from. Somewhere behind Zuko, the sky starts to lighten into a purple, and Aang wants to scream at it—wants to throw himself against the forces of nature and punch and shout and tear the world piece by piece because the sun isn't allowed to shine when everything is so messed up. Dawn can't come when he still feels closer to vaulting himself over the side of the fire escape that accepting that he's about to leave again. 

It's not fair that life can just keep going when everything around his has shattered and disappeared beneath him. 

"You don't get to shoulder this burden, got it?" Zuko says with a bleeding edge Aang is half afraid to press against, and yet can't help it. Zuko silences him with a sharp gaze as soon as his lips part to protest, and Aang slumps back against the brick once more and just tries to catch his breath. "I'm the one that allowed my own bullshit to cloud my judgement. I'm the one that didn't say anything. I could tell you that I didn't tell anyone because it's what you asked of me, but the truth is you never would have asked me to tell anyone, and I should have been better for you. And I am so, so sorry I wasn't. I don't think that I will ever be able to make up for what happened to you because of my fucking cowardice."

Zuko goes to take another tug at an endless cigarette, but the ember has long since gone out and the smoke has stopped drifting towards a lightening sky. Aang can't move, can't feel anything beyond the distant static in his limbs as Zuko falls apart before him, wild eyes collecting tears and face twisting and contorting as it works around what Zuko has convinced himself is the truth. 

"But I'm gonna try. I'm gonna do everything I can to fix this, even if that means loading up that stupid fucking Jaguar and running away to—to fucking Sedona, okay?" Zuko turns fully to face him, grabs the seam of Aang's hoodie and tugs him close, eyes darting around his face, searching, searching, searching. It's clear he's trying to convince himself as much as he is Aang, which should be nowhere near as comforting as it is. "You can stay here, or-or we'll find you another family in Dogtown to stay with, but you aren't going anywhere, okay? Not if me, or Sokka, or Katara, or Suki, or Toph, or any one of us has anything to do with it." 

Aang pushes himself off of the wall as he feels the tears form in his eyes, itching and burning against the climbing feeling he's been trying to hold back. He throws his arms across Zuko's shoulder, buries his face in the warm, soft skin of his shoulder, and tries to believe his words. Pictures their faces, all of the memories they hold, and all of them meaning more to him than anything. How much more each conversation, each morning at the beach, ripped wave, long car ride means to him than any pages in a journal of people that were supposed to take care of him. 

That's the thing about friends, Aang thinks. There isn't an obligation, no bound blood or legal ties to uphold—the only thing keeping friends together is the desire to be there, the need to hold onto the people that you choose to fill in the missing parts of you instead of those that are chosen for you. More powerful than blood, stronger than any riptide or current, and more bright than any rising sun, he lets the realization wash over him that Zuko is right. If nothing else, if no one else is on his side, he has his friends—has his real family. 

"And stop worrying about me and Sokka," Zuko murmurs against Aang's ear and he winds his arms up around Aang's back, tugging him tightly against his chest. A huff of unexpected laughter escapes him at his tone, at the irritation laced with underlying exasperation. It's familiar, something closer to the Zuko that makes him smile so easily, and feels like some semblance of normalcy amidst the chaos. 

Aang feels like he's in free fall, completely adrift and lost, body limp against the rushing air around him—and yet somehow, he knows Zuko is waiting to catch him before he hits the ground. For now, that's enough. For now, he puts his faith in that. 

~

Zuko only accepted his father would never love him with searing embers against his temple, but the first seeds of doubt started festering when he was 14. 

Chain-smoking shitty cigarettes on the balcony, Zuko remembers the first time his father had hit him so hard it had visibly mottled and bruised. He was young enough at the time that the memory should have faded off into a dull ache, but he can still see the way the sun had hit his father's dark office, can still smell whiskey and old cigars, can still picture eyes on fire and a chipped piece of China in a huge, overbearing hand. 

His fragile skin had been bludgeoned so hard he had to stay home from school for 3 days to maintain appearances—which in the long run had only aggravated his father's ire further. That was the last day that any maid looked at him with anything other than heavy pity in their eyes, and the first time that Zuko had tasted sweet, sea salt ice cream. His mother's hand in his, walking down the posh streets and yet still standing out, she'd taught him his first skill in surviving life under his rule. 

"Don't talk about it," she had said, wiping away the tears and sniffles that had leaked from his face, burning after the fact despite the numbness of the ailment. Burning in his heart, burning through his soul. "You walk into that house, you hold your chin high, and you smile, okay?" 

She'd tipped his chin up, given him a devious smile from behind her long hair, and drummed her acrylic nails against his sides until he laughed so hard the tears subsided into something of complete, unrestrained elation. 

"Don't say a word about it, okay? Don't let him know that it got to you," she murmured as Zuko tried to catch his breath from the tickles, and even then, the words felt so wrong in the conversation. "You can do that, can't you, my beautiful boy?" 

And Zuko had nodded vehemently, always eager to please and desperate for the scraps of attention his mother doted upon him. As long as she kept running her fingers through his hair so gently, he'd agree to anything she said. 

Zuko had been 4, and it should have been the last time that his father ever laid his hands on him. And yet it wasn't—not even close. 

But a nearly decade later, a red marked report card crumbled in that same huge fist? That was when Zuko had looked at his father and for the first time wondered if there would ever be anything other that cold, cold fire. Not even ten minutes later, curled on the cold marble of the foyer and spitting out the blood in his mouth onto the stark, pristine white, he'd started to accept that no, he would never be good enough. He'd tried toeing the line and had equally surrendered himself to his rebellion and each elicited the same reaction—so what the fuck did it even matter?

That could have been the last time that his father ever laid his hands on him, but he only got more pitying, forlorn gazes, and this time his mom wasn't even there to pick him up off the icy floor. Only Azula, propped against the doorframe with a frown twisting her features so grotesquely she hardly resembled the 12 year old she's supposed to. 

Instead, Zuko had drug himself off of the floor, had taped his own ribs and iced his own face, and had taken her for ice cream instead. Had talked to her about her favorite show until the frown had smoothed itself out and she'd settled back into north and ease. Across an iron wrought diner table, Zuko still caught her looking at him with that heavy gaze, a million questions pooling in eyes too young to look so sad, and he remembers it—remembers it so clearly, because it was one of the last times he ever saw any lingering warmth that their father hadn't yet snuffed out. 

Aang had looked at him like that earlier. Had gazed at him from across a narrow balcony and searched for the help that he so desperately wanted Zuko to give him. Aang still had a heart—has a bigger heart than any of them really—and maybe, if Zuko does this right, he'll be able to hold onto it through whatever bumpy road awaits them next. 

Aang is still passed out in the couch when Aang and Katara show up at the apartment, and Zuko is still smoking like it's oxygen on the fire escape. He's watched the sun crest the buildings, has felt warmth shimmer across his skin as cold persisted beneath the surface, and yet still isn't quite ready to face the day. Isn't ready to face the knocking on the door, or the crushing knowledge that despite what he tells Aang, a lot of what comes next is out of Zuko's control. He isn't ready to face Sokka, blue eyes disappointed and hurt, and isn't ready to accept that despite being hours ago, that night on the beach resembles something closer to years away. 

So he doesn't face it, because, despite all the postulating and pretending he's changed for the better, he will always be a coward. 

He rises slow and shaky from the balcony, feels his legs sway beneath him from misuse and exhaustion, and hauls himself down the narrow steps towards the alley. In his jacket pocket, he has his phone, and half empty butane lighter, a nearly depleted pack of cigarettes, and a lonely arcade token rattling around. 

When he reaches down to shake out another coffin nail, his hand wraps around the cold, lone arcade token, grips so hard the ridged edges dig into his palm, and feels his heart shudder and shatter around the memories. Loose stone kicks under his feet as he stumbles through the half lit alley like a zombie, raising the elusive cigarette to his lips and shutting his eyes as the dancing flame comes up to ignite it. 

He'd been at the fucking pier. He had spent his evening wrapped up in Sokka, doting on his little sister and trading suggestive glances with his crush, had tipped his head back on the Ferris wheel and basked in the evening. He had driven the coast and convinced himself that his anxiety over Santa Barbara was actually significant, and then he’d sat in the sand beside the boy he loved and danced around the words he wasn’t sure how to say. 

He had spent his night happy and free, for once unencumbered by where he came from and all the while Aang had been suffering, had been going through—going through that. Exactly what Zuko had gone through, when it comes down to it, and realization hits him so hard he stops in his tracks. 

He’s just like them. 

He’s just like the people that stood by and watched their boss pummel a helpless kid into nothing but a sack of flesh more blue and yellow than flesh toned, and had continued on with their lives like it was business as usual. Is just like Jet, who had known, had been nearly told first hand what Zuko went through, and shrugged it off with a sharp smile and a biting, painful kiss against swollen lips. And now-now he’s just like his mother, running away from the problem instead of standing his ground and facing what was waiting for him on the other side of that door. 

He wants to be like his uncle, and played up a big game to Aang tonight playing the hero and convincing him that if push came to shove Zuko would be there, but how can he be if the slightest disturbance turns him into—turns him into this? In a world full of vacant eyes unwilling to see the marks, unwilling to risk his father’s wrath even if they did see them, he’d become just like the rest of them. 

He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to think about anything at all, and that sparks a dangerous train of thought that has his fingers twitching for his phone in his pocket. Jet has stuff—Jet always has something, whether it’s ditch weed or top shelf OTC’s, and his gnawing hunger to quell the incessant screaming in his head is insatiable against the knowledge that giving Jet an in back into his life for something as stupid as a fix is infallibly ridiculous. 

Yet his fingers twitch around his phone, and would likely dial up a number he still has memorized and yet never saved despite everything in him searing beneath his skin not to. Would probably call him, and use the right words that he knows will get him what he wants, and would fall right back into the trap he was in nearly a year ago—if it weren’t for the unread messages glaring up at him painfully against his irritated, tired eyes. 

From: Sokka (7:58 am)

hey. tara and i just got to the apartment, and i know that there’s a reason ur not here—a reason that i’m not going to use to further hurt u by making u tell me. i’m sorry i reacted the way that i did. ur completely right, i was absolutely unfair and a complete asshole. 

From: Sokka (7:59 am)

knowing u, i’m sure ur twisting yourself into knots over the blame ur feeling, but i need u to know that this is not ur fault. i don’t know the first thing about what u have been through, and i’m not trying to claim that i do, but i know that u have a huge personal stake in this, and that u feel responsible—but ur not, and even if u dont believe me, i just needed to tell u

From: Sokka (8:03 am)

life is gonna get pretty hectic these next few weeks. don’t think for a second u and aang are going through this alone. i’m incredibly sleep deprived n probably not making much sense (and i’ve nearly gone and written u a whole essay by this point) but somewhere along the line, when some of the dust settles, u and i really, really need to talk. 

From: Sokka (8:04 am)

please come back to us in one piece. 

Zuko feels his heart dropped down to his toes, feels an anvil slamming down into the place where the organ should be. Finally, the tears building at his lashes fall, huge, unbidden things that scorch his eyes and hit the pavement he hunches over with a punctuating splat. It’s too much, all crashing over him over and over again, so many different layers and emotions knotted between the various feelings ripping through him. 

He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to stop crying, how to stop being so weak, and how to get back to a place where he’s actually equipped to be of any use—so he does the one thing that has never failed, and dials a familiar number on his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To preface, I’m sorry. 
> 
> It was never, ever my intention to fall off of the face of the earth and leave for nearly three months. Instead of weaving a long list of factors and reasons why this took so long, I’ll just tell you all the truth—these past few months slugged and pummeled me right into the dirt, and have been some of the toughest I’ve fought through. Sparing you the details of a grueling battle with my mental health, simply put, I lost interest and inspiration in most things, including a story that I love and care for so, so much. The dark place this story is stuck in was hard to write combated against my own bullshit, but it was high time I worked through it and got this baby published, and I am so glad to be back. 
> 
> To all of you that still care for this story—please trust in me when I tell you I do too, and it has not and will not be abandoned. I can’t promise what’s to come with my emotional well-being, but for now I’ve found comfort in writing again, and am going to take advantage of that while I can, even if it’s not at all to the caliber of quality that I wish it was. To me, this chapter has been one of the worst—I have pieces of dialogue that I’m trying to connect throughout this particular storyline, and in the process of struggling with that I feel as though tone and setting have been sorely neglected, which is never something I’m okay with. Hopefully, you still enjoy it and it can bring you a bit of happiness. 
> 
> Belatedly, I want to wish you all a merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year. I hope that the holidays have been restful for all of you and that you’ve spent your time happy and warm inside and out. If you celebrate everything under the sun or nothing at all, I hope that December wasn’t so tough and that you all made it out unscathed. 
> 
> Again, I’m so, so very sorry for the late update. I love you all, and have cried reading through comments that I’ve received and the continued support that I have gotten. I promise to respond to all comments over these next few days, and know that I treasure each and every one of you. 
> 
> For those of you interested, the three playlists for this fic will also be updated to coincide with the changes happening with the characters and the emotions that they’re feeling in the next few days. Also, in case anyone is interested, I’m always available on tumblr @ p3nnyl4ne , even though I don’t plan on completely falling off again anytime soon. :)
> 
> Thank you all so much for continued support and love, and I can’t wait to continue sharing this story with all of you wonderful people. <3
> 
> ( Ps—if some of the things introduced with Aang’s character seem unfamiliar—good >:) in all seriousness, writing from a new perspective such as Aang’s was so different and new, but I really enjoyed it. Aang’s one of my comfort characters and it’s hard to put him through it so much, but also interesting to explore normally untapped emotions within him, particularly the darker, sadder parts of his character I see frequently neglected in the fandom. Alright, truth time? I missed writing Sokka so much in this chapter and, don’t tell the others, but he may be my favorite to write, just between us ;) )


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko receives some difficult to stomach but much needed words of wisdom. 
> 
> Aang and Zuko go on a mini field trip seeking some sort of reprieve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think this chapter needs any additional warnings than are to be expected with this fic? It’s sort of happy, sort of sad, but either way deals with heavy content material. 
> 
> Disclaimer, though—I legit know nothing about law and haven’t been in a courtroom since like,,the third grade on a field trip. So yeah, lets just pretend that the legal aspects of this make sense and are realistic, cool?

Sometimes, when he quits actively trying to block it out, Zuko can remember the courtroom. 

He can remember it so vividly, in fact, that it's able to shut him right down. Able to gloss his eyes, derail his train of thought, and stick him right back in a stiff wooden seat, bared and open and bleeding out in front of what felt like a thousand gazed that he'd never be able to shake. He can remember the smell, old fixtures blending beneath sharp antiseptic—can remember the way dark suits had clashed against black walls, how pristine shoes had squeaked against waxed tile. 

Most of all, he remembers how it had all been performative. The second he'd stepped foot in the court, the lawyer had started pushing a narrative to get a misty eyed jury on his side. Eyes had gravitated towards his still bandaged, still healing face, and it had made his skin crawl and his being burns as he watched them present the pictures the hospital had taken of the bruises, the faded scars, and the final, cumulative result of his father's hatred. 

It felt fake, the way they asked him so many questions clearly skewed in his favor and—and there was hardly any part left in him that wanted anything but distance between them, but it still didn't feel right when the narrative was so clearly painted in his favor. But it wasn't even a lie, and everything they were presenting was true, despite the ache it settled in his bones. He just hadn't wanted to admit to himself that he was such a victim.

He'd almost walked out of the room during cross examination. It was drilling, and gruesome, and he'd stuttered and fumbled his words in a way his attorney worried would paint him as a liar, but he'd gotten through it. He hated it, and burned with shame and embarrassment when his good eye had started burning with hardly concealed tears, but it'd turned the court in his favor, had made them sympathize, made them pity, made them—made them believe him. 

And then Zhao—that evil, smarmy bastard—had been brought to the stand, and Zuko had sunk into the floor. 

He had bolted for the door at that point, halfway to throwing up and still so unsteady on his feet, and he'd collapsed. By some miracle, after two days of this grueling, the judge had decided it was enough and called it quits for the day. Zuko had been able to sob against the backside of the old building in peace without cameras and microphones and fucking eyes suffocating him. 

The next day, it was over. 

They hadn't won—the case hadn't even had time to see itself through, hadn't even called any witnesses besides Zhao, because as always, the vice grip that his father had on the world would always catch up with him. 

For once, his father's obsession with appearances had worked in his favor. For once, they had a common goal—Zuko wanted to be as far removed as was humanly possible, and Ozai wanted him gone before it turned into even more of a publicity stunt than the 'accusations' had already wrought upon him. 

He'd surrendered, though it somehow still felt like he had won, or at least had the upper hand in the maneuver—that he was deigning his son and his brother with some sort of favor—but it soon stopped mattering, because with a signature, Zuko was out. 

Except it was never as simple as the custody transfer would look on paper. The debilitating terror still gnawing at him now made sure to remind him of that. 

"Zuko? Where'd you go?"

He blinks, the brightness striking his dry eyes and dissolving into sunlight instead of the fluorescent courtroom's sterile white. Worn wood poked uncomfortably at his back, loose sand streaks up his ankle. Time to come back down to Earth, he reminds himself feebly. 

"West Hollywood. March 18th," he answers as he blinks his surroundings into consciousness. He takes a few steps back—right. Usually easier said than done when it comes to dissociating. 

It's a feat that he doesn't yank himself away when a gentle hand pushes the hair draping around his face away, but he can't entirely repress the flinch. The voice had been unfamiliar as he was coming back to himself, but the small, sad sigh that he hears clearly? That's something he's completely familiar with, something that makes him warm from within, from somewhere the past few hours have frozen over. 

Mai. 

"Shit," she hisses, removing her hand as her expression twists in understanding. Zuko cranes forward to rest his elbows on his knees and hangs his head between his hands. He focuses hard, hones in on the sand covered concrete beneath him, at the familiar give and take echoing around him, and the warmth striking his cold skin. 

He's not in the courtroom—not even in the same city, anymore. Venice is neutral ground, he remembers belatedly after the immediate spike of panic has already turned him into half formed knots. It's why they came here, why he brought Mai here to talk—they're safe here. 

"Yeah. Super fun," he murmurs with a shake of his head, and when he looks up, blinks out at the sparkling water in front of them, he can't help the words that come next. "I almost called him instead of you, y'know."

"Him?" Mai echoes, and Zuko exhales lowly, pathetically misses the pack he'd abandoned on the windowsill and the distraction it had brought him. He slides a dubious look her way, and realization seems to dawn on her face as he looks away again. 

"Jet. Dunno if I wanted drugs, or sex or..or what, exactly, but it was still my first instinct," he elaborates begrudgingly, regardless of the fact that he's the one that brought it up. He's already spilled his guts out about everything going with Aang to Mai long before his head thrust him back into the unpleasantries that perpetually pervade his subconscious—that should be the hard part to talk about, but for some reason it doesn't feel like it right now. Not with the way Mai is looking at him, and not with the way that his heart still feels lodged up in his throat despite getting everything off of his chest. 

Which clearly means that not everything is really off his chest. 

"Maybe both. Or neither. Either way, it doesn't surprise me," she says cooly, and while she's not wrong, it still stings. He clearly shows it, too. "I didn't mean it like that," she corrects in an instant, and Zuko cranes to cast another glance her way, hates the pity in her eyes and emotion so unfamiliar there. Something he put there, indirectly or not. 

"I just wanted to stop feeling this way," he feebly defends, even though that would have been no excuse had he actually fallen back on his old crutch. He feels fucking miserable, truth be told, and regardless of whatever he's supposed to be working through—despite whatever regurgitated therapy shit is probably expected of him right now—crippling guilt at even being so struck down by all this shrouds any valid emotion. He tells Mai as much. "Which is such bullshit, because I'm not even the one that's affected by this—"

"No. That's bullshit," Mai interrupts, and the jarring conviction in her voice shuts him right up. "Sure, it's not happening to you this time—but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen to you. That it didn't change you. And it definitely doesn't mean that this doesn't affect you, just, and doesn't mean that this isn't still going to tear you up—especially because it's Aang—"

"But I should—"

"It makes sense that you'd be inclined to call him. Objectively, had I been in your shoes, I would have done the same thing. It's easier to self numb than it is to walk through the flames, but it's weaker," Mai shifts an unwavering look his way, eyes steely and features completely impassive despite her words, and Zuko is just grateful for her pragmatism making this conversation more digestible. "And you're anything but weak."

"Only way out is through," he says before he can stop it, and it elicits a humorless, dry laugh. 

"That doesn't really sound like you."

"It's not," he agrees easily, but doesn't feel the need to mention that it's that same regurgitated therapy bullshit that he's never believed that's stuck circulating in his brain. 

He closes his eyes, breathes deep and long, and steadies himself against the knowledge that Mai is right. Of course she is. It's why the part of Zuko that's still clinging to logic and reason called her, instead of the part battling the ripping tidal waves of emotion dragging him under and spitting him back out that would have called Jet. 

"I'm going to say something that you're not going to like," is all the warning that Zuko gets before Mai angles herself to face him and tears right into his fucking soul. 

"You can't take this on. And don't deny it, because I can see it in your eyes—you're more transparent than you think you are, at least to me. I know that you'll say he's just a kid, and you'll try to shoulder this alone because it's what happened before, and it's what you think is normal—but you don't have to." She leans forward, rests a hand against his shoulder slow and purposeful, and yet he still can't look her in the eye. "Yeah. He's just a kid, but you are too." 

"It fucking sucks," he breathes, and Mai doesn't remove her hand, silent, unwavering support and calm, and maybe he has the ability to talk about this and not throw up buried somewhere deep down. He's never tried, but this had been nothing if not a summer of firsts, so why not rehash some lingering trauma while he's at it? 

"Facing your abuser in court like that? There's nothing more terrifying," and my own father seared off my flesh with a clothes iron, he thinks but doesn't say. "It'd be even worse for him than it was for me, since he's just a foster kid that none of them fucking care about. They're just going to shove him back in the system anyways, even if the bastard doing this gets held accountable for his actions. Then they'll just throw him back out there, where it'll happen again."

"Zuko—"

"And I'm not exaggerating, okay? I fucking saw it happen, long before I ever set foot in a courtroom myself." Don't think about them, he repeats over and over. Don't think about Kuzon. Too late, something evil and cruel whispers in the back of his mind, before whirling around screaming at him: why didn't you stay with them? "I don't trust those assholes parading around like heroes—they're evil. I don't trust anyone—"

"Now you're just lying." 

A beat. Zuko feels rage rip through him before he can rationalize what he's actually feeling. 

"What the fuck do you possibly know about it—"

"I know that the night you and Jet broke up, you called your uncle and told him the truth. I know that at the beginning of the summer, for some reason you chose to let Aang in and gave him enough pieces of the story to not feel so alone in all of this," Mai takes a deep breath, as if steeling herself from Zuko and whatever it is she sees in his gaze, and he braces himself in preparation. 

"I know that you're in love with Sokka, and that you let him meet Kiyi because of it, regardless of the fact that family is a huge no-touch trigger for you. And I know that today you called me instead of Jet—because you didn't want to self destruct, sure—but because you trust me. That's trust, Zuko, and it's not your fault you don't want to admit it, but that doesn't make it any less true. All those people, all those actions and choices that you made, were because of trust." 

"For fuck's sake," he hisses once more, winding his hands up into his hair again and jerking away from Mai's touch. He didn't plan on having a mental breakdown on a public beach bench before lunchtime, but at this point he has no choice but to pencil it in. He relents his own feelings and ego and acquiesces to Mai's words. 

"Maybe you're right. But I still..I shouldn't trust them. It-it feels so wrong, so I push it down, hoping it'll go away and I can just be normal—but sometimes it feels like it physically grates against my fucking soul when Aang looks right through me with those big, sad eyes, or..or Sokka puts the words in my mouth that I just can't get out and just gets the mess up here—" he taps a finger to his temple, grazes rough scar tissue, and wants to scream. "I hate it so much, and I hate it because I feel like a fucking junkie that can't let go of their fix—feeling like I belong here, feeling like I trust these people, moving on from everything is addictive. I..I want to be a part of it all, but it feels wrong and I don't. know. why."

"Relationships don't equate to something like substance abuse, weirdo," Mai says easily, as if this conversation isn't aligning his entire proceedings with the coming confrontations he's about to have. "It doesn't work like that. It rubs you wrong because you're having to unlearn this idea you've built up within yourself that everyone's going to fuck you over. Those feelings aren't addiction to something forbidden—it's just happiness that you're denying yourself."

"Aang doesn't look at you like that because he's trying to manipulate you. Sokka doesn't respect your boundaries and fill the gaps because he's trying to deceive you with some false blanket of comfort. I don't push you about your feelings because I want you to implode." Mai shifts beside him, leans enough weight against his hunched over side that it's unspoken comfort instead of oppression, and Zuko feels the phantom ghost of lips against his shoulder blade. He feels something shiver and shudder in his chest, and just wants to let go of everything. He wants to believe everything she says, everything he's seen this summer. He wants to stop tiptoeing around his life, and settle into the security he's never been privy to before. 

To do that, Zuko realizes, he can't keep avoiding everything. He can't keep it inside, because doing that leaves him feeling like he does now—poisoned from the inside, his organs corroding away but still trying to hang on. He's sick of it, sick of feeling so bad despite all the good in his life. So he has to put himself on the line now, after years of purposefully avoiding exactly that and keeping his cards as close to his chest as possible. When he thinks about it, thinks about who it is he'd be bearing his innards to, it's not nearly as petrifying as it should be. 

"You aren't alone this time. And Aang isn't  
either—because even if you aren't able to trust anyone else, trust yourself. He has you." 

And I have him, Zuko thinks, and as simple as that, some of the heaviness bearing down on his heart alleviates. 

~

“So, it’s a surprise?”

“Nothing to get excited about, really.” 

Aang doesn’t look very convinced, but Zuko’s sort of taking a risk dragging him out here, anyways, and he’s not sure that verbalizing what it is that he’s about to have Aang do would be the best thing at the moment. 

So instead of trying to explain the therapy session Zuko is about to give him, he presses his foot harder against the gas and feels some of the tension leave his body as the speedometer ticks upward. He cracks the windows and lets the wind tangle his hair and the white noise entangle with the music like everything is normal, and this is just another one of their typical summer excursions. It hardly works, but regardless the distraction seems to have eased some of the buzzing, nervous energy the two of them had been bouncing off of each other earlier that morning. 

Casting glances to the passenger seat, Aang seems to be doing somewhat better. He’s settled himself against the seat, seeming to have finally surrendered himself to the fact that Zuko isn’t going to indulge him with the details of their little field trip. Zuko would attribute most of his growing calm to his visit with Sokka and Katara earlier. When he’d gotten back to the apartment after parting ways with Mai, the siblings were long gone, but in their place was a smiling Aang—still looking exhausted and frayed at the edges, but something closer to himself. 

The seedier parts of South LA are still familiar after so long apart, it seems. The ways his tires crunch over torn pavement, roads and houses blending together until seedy give way to dilapidated. He cuts the engine in a familiar parking lot and watches as Aang’s features contort and harden as he narrows his eyes and gazes out the windshield. 

Zuko huffs a laugh and hops out of the drivers side, kicking at loosened stone as he waits for Aang to do the same. When he cranes his neck back to take it all in, the old warehouse stands the same as it has since he was a kid. Half collapsed, more of a hazard than a structure at this point, and yet completely unnoticed against the rest of the unloved edges of one of the most recognizable skylines in the country. 

There’s a metaphor there somewhere that Zuko is too drained to piece together. 

He hears the crunch of feet against gravel and the passenger door clicking back into place, and without a word he moves towards the boarded up entryway. He doesn’t look back to see if Aang is following, instead relies on the rhythmic sound of hesitant footsteps. So far removed, it’s still clockwork lowering himself down and slipping between two feeble pieces of plywood that have been trying in vain to ward off the public from the spot for years. 

The inside hasn’t changed. The huge skylights are still crusted over from years without maintenance, casting hazy blue light that pick up the floating dust particles, and the beams are still caked with dirt and dust and cobwebs. The ground is rough with shattered fragments of ceramic, balled up wads of trash and the ever cracking pavement, and Zuko can feel phantom scrapes years healed from wiping out on it. The ratty couches are still strewn about, left behind furniture from whatever group that last claimed the space had left behind. He heads towards the spot that looks the most used and grins to himself when he finds what he’s looking for. 

Aang looks terrified when Zuko gives the baseball bat a few test swings, which just makes some manic, unbidden feeling burst in his chest. He’s not sure if it’s a good thing or not yet. 

“Sorry, what exactly are we doing here?” 

Zuko ignores his question to crouch down and tug a second baseball bat from where it’s been wedged underneath the couch. He offers it to Aang, who takes it in his hands with that same resting look of bewilderment, like Zuko has grown two heads. And yeah, this may be creeping into diet serial-killer like behavior, but at this point it’ll all start to make sense eventually, so Zuko doesn’t even think it’s worth it to dissuade Aang from thinking he’s lost his mind. He kind of feels like he has, anyways. 

“This used to be some sorta ceramic company,” he says as he turns away from Aang towards one of the crates lined against the wall. He drags it towards their spot before continuing. “Total bullshit, if you ask me.” 

He picks up one of the faux porcelain pieces, tosses it in the air, and promptly whirls his bat through the path it falls across. Aang jumps as the shattered pieces hit the ground, and Zuko turns his gaze back onto him, swings the bat a few times for good measure and tests how it fares in his other hand. 

“Complete, white-washed cultural appropriation that rich suburbia’s ate up back in the day, but eventually they got found out for advertising this shit as genuine and got shut down—left this wonderful legacy behind.” He stretches his arms to either side, gestures to the humble kingdom theirs for the taking, and grabs another plate. 

He tosses it to Aang, who easily sidesteps and merely watches with wide eyes as it shatters against the concrete without his intervention, anyways. Zuko frowns. 

“I’m lost,” Aang murmurs like there’s some sort of right answer, and Zuko takes a deep breath before grabbing another plate. “What’s the point?” He continues after a beat, which Zuko isn’t ready for. He considers his words carefully, treading lightly around the way Aang is staring down at shattered ceramic like it’s him in a hundred pieces on the ground instead. 

“There isn’t one. It just feels good.” 

“Mindless destruction?” Aang offers, and Zuko considers it for a moment before shaking his head. He thinks about this morning, and his revelations with Mai, and pulls a bit of the truth from within himself. Something relatively easy, just as a trial run. 

“I used to burn my art,” he says slowly, dropping Aang’s suddenly sharp gaze to watch where he’s twisting the end of his bat into the ground. “When..when I left my old home, before I came to Venice, a lot of my stuff got destroyed. And it was something that I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of, even to the point of trying it myself—and for some reason, when I’d watch these..these pieces that I’d poured my time and my heart into completely disintegrate—it felt like a release, somehow.” 

“And this feels the same?” Aang pushes, and Zuko nods, looks up and finds him staring down at the concrete once more. He’s overthinking it. 

“Sort of. I don’t think that it can necessarily be mindless if it helps,” he says, reaching down and this time placing one of the intact bowls into Aang’s hand. His current tactic isn’t quite working, so he sits Aang down on the couch and crouches in front of him, makes him look at him. 

“Uncle once told me about these Buddhist monks..y’know, the total hippy-dippy type that you love,” a huff of laughter, something like a win, and Zuko presses on. “They make these huge, elaborate mandalas in the sand. It takes hours, days, weeks—and then when it’s finished, they just wipe them away.” 

Aang turns over the bowl in his hands contemplatively, and Zuko thinks maybe he’s starting to break through when Aang looks up at him with curiously rather than alarm. 

“It’s about impermanence,” Zuko says as he rises from his position and grabs a plate of his own and turns away. He lands another well aimed hit and it shatters midair and scatters a few feet away. “For the monks, it’s about the material aspects of life. But I think that the same can be said about feelings. Because how we feel now—while the pain never really goes away—it changes, and gets easier. Emotion is transitory.” 

“So, it’s kind of like using the destruction as a..as a kind of manifestation of those feelings?” He pieces together, and Zuko feels an unabashed smile break across his features as Aang nods his head as he speaks, the words sinking in as he puzzles through it on his own. 

“Yeah,” he says easily, because maybe overcomplicating this with metaphors about life and material and permanence is the only way for Aang to understand—and that’s okay. Because for Zuko.. “Plus, sometimes it just feels really, really good to break shit.” 

Finally, without warning Aang tosses the bowl up into the air and with more power than Zuko had any way of anticipating slams his bat into its side. Zuko holds his breath as quiet breathes around the commotion of the destruction, and waits for his reaction. It doesn’t take long for him to feel some of the tension burst into elation in his chest as Aang smiles—really smiles—and lets out a breathy laugh. 

Zuko can’t help it—he laughs too. 

Tips his head back and lets it overtake him, hears Aang join in and laughs harder, because it’s easier than crying. Laughter can sometimes feel the same as screaming, too, if not a little less cathartic—and for now it’s more than enough. 

Two crates and nearly 100 plates later, Aang has some of the light in his eyes back, and Zuko has a whole new bout of bravery running through his bloodstream as he drives them back to Venice. Aang looks at him expectantly when he pulls into the alley behind the Jasmine Dragon, but Zuko doesn’t move to cut the engine and head upstairs. 

“Uhm, Zuko? You good?”

“I’m gonna go see Sokka,” he blurts before he can help it, and when he chances a look over at Aang, the bastard is just grinning ear to ear. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I think that we have some..things to work through,” he murmurs, and feels some of that newfound bravery turning to ice in his veins as the daunting task before him starts to play out in his head. He relays Mai’s words over and over, thinks about how it’d been relatively painless giving Aang the truth earlier, and yeah, maybe it won’t be so bad, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. 

“Good. Bring pizza on your way home.” 

And as simple as that Aang shuts the door behind him and trudges the growingly familiar trek up the fire escape. Zuko stares after him long after he’s gone inside, before shaking himself of his half baked anxiety and pulling back out to trek his own familiar path across the city. 

He’s left sitting parked in front of Sokka’s house much sooner than his fragile false confidence could have prepared him for, and even sooner he’s face to face with that familiar worn wood door. He can hear the television in the living room and sees the lights through the curtains, and knows that if he has second thoughts now, whatever is about to happen never will. 

He raps his knuckles against the door, holds his breath, and waits. 

When it finally swings open with a creak, the breath still lodged in his throat fills his chest as he stares. Because standing in the doorframe isn’t Sokka—no, it’s a huge, behemoth of a man bearing the nuances of the one he expected, and yet so, so different. Taller and aged, with kind eyes and yet a drawn expression. He’s in frayed board shorts and a faded AC/DC tank top that hangs loose and shows deeply inked tattoos in strong muscles. 

He’s someone Zuko would pass on the street and likely be afraid of, but that aching familiarity the man possesses, combined with the tub of chocolate ice cream in his hands and the metal spoon hanging from his lips leaves no room for doubt about who it is that’s before him. Unfortunately for him, first impressions have never exactly been his strong suit, and the breath he’s been holding in exhales around the one statement swirling around in his head. 

“You’re not Sokka.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna post this on Valentine’s Day just to be funny, but realized that Sokka isn’t even in this again, and we aren’t exactly dealing with the most romantic material here—yikes. So early update?
> 
> I really, really enjoyed this chapter. Aang and Zuko’s field trip was set to happen a lot earlier in the story, but I scrapped it and decided to rewrite it here and just—yeah. Kinda personal for me, which made it a challenge to tackle objectively, but I feel like we’re finally having a big break through with Zuko (90k later—yikes x2) and it’s exhilarating to reach this sort of culmination. I hope you guys like it, too. 
> 
> A few weeks ago, I was lying in my bed as snow was piling up so high outside my window was an buried a few inches deep, and I could just feel this unbidden panic crawling up my throat out of nowhere. With it lodged firmly in place, I blared Heat Waves so loud my ears were hot to the touch and wrote out the entirety of Sokka and Zuko’s talk—the big one, that I’ve been wanting to write since I started this bad boy back in the summer. It was coming together, and I was proud of it..and then it promptly vanished from existence. So again we prolong the confrontation, but I’m actually pretty sure that within 5 or so chapters (hopefully), I’ll be closing shop on this story (wow, writing that made my heart clench, ouchie). I’ll try my hand at rewriting it a second time soon, but for now you get more buildup ;)
> 
> One more thing—HOW IN THE FUCK DOES THIS STORY HAVE OVER 13 THOUSAND HITS???? The first night I published this, I woke up with 97 hits and 3 comments and thought that I had peaked. This was never something I did because of the attention I sought to gain, and I never could have anticipated the connection so many feel with this story. What I’m trying to say in a very long winded way is thank you—for your reads, kudos, comments, and support. I know I’ve been slacking and haven’t responded to recent comments, but know that I read every single word of every last one of them, and on bad days they make the formidable a little easier to take on. 
> 
> (Oh, and if anyone is curious what Zuko is talking about with Aang : https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/religion/monks-take-days-build-mandala-oxford-then-destroy-hours/T3fMpI2GucnJsYlnpFbtjO/ )
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time. Love you guys <3


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